


A Degree of Hope

by TigerDragon



Series: Prerogative of the Brave [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:36:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 77,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier, the newest professor of biology at Oxford, runs afoul of Erika Lehnsherr in 1962. Chaos, romance and arguments ensue. In a world just beginning to awaken to the mutants among them, will they come together to face the future or be torn apart by the weight of their pasts?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One - Fall

**Author's Note:**

> We want to thank our first readers, Trailfoot and Aidan, for their feedback and their patience in waiting for this to come out. It was a long three months, and you were both wonderful. We also want to give a special shout-out to Penknife (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife), whose inspiration you'll find echoing through much of our story. Fear the Rest, in particular, contributed a lot to our desire to make this story as historically influenced and accurate as possible. The seed of the idea for our version of Erika belongs to Alara and her letter-fic "A Letter to a Friend" (http://shifting-sands.alara.net/new/alara/letter.htm), which you should all very definitely go and read as soon as possible. I've homaged it in several places (the name of Erika's ex-husband, for instance), and I hope the reverence to the original is clear. Thanks also to Marvel, who owns these characters - we'll put them back when we're done, we swear.
> 
> At various points in the fic there will be: alcoholism, implied past non-con, non-con fantasy, non-con voyeurism of consensual sex, descriptions of torture, mention of past maiming, off- and on-screen murder of various kinds, mention of kidnapping, consensual sex of various kinds, non-con use of telepathy, infidelity and consensual polyamory. The chapters in which these things appear will carry their own warnings.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and we look forward to seeing you again with a sequel when our schedules permit.

_  
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.   
_

_\- Mohandas Gandhi_

 

 

 **Oxford, September 16th, 1962**

  


“Civil rights?” a disheveled Professor Michael Wallis indignantly retorted, waving his whisky around dramatically. “Civil rights? Look, idealism is all well and good, but someone’s got to keep those people in check.” He took a final swig, emptying his glass, and leveled a grave look at each of his four companions. “What do you think they’d do if given free reign?”

Three of the drinkers grunted or muttered noncommittally, but even through the warm haze of the scotch Charles could hear their agreement, feel their fear. He wished he could say it was a surprise to experience it coming from his otherwise rather intelligent and reasonably compassionate colleagues, but not much about the other junior professors--or, come to think of it, anyone else these days--came as a surprise to Charles.

“What would they do?” he said philosophically. “What would they do.

“Now, let’s assume for the sake of argument that you’re right about them--that what they want _isn’t_ simple equality and dignity of treatment,” he began, nudging the other men’s minds towards shame. Perhaps a bit more than a nudge in Wallis’ case. He should probably feel guilty about that, but in the back of his mind lurked the knowledge that he could permanently change Wallis’ beliefs in a minute of concentration. A brief moment of mild self-horror was nothing.

“Let’s assume they’re after more, that they want to take over.” Charles glared coldly at all his table mates, allowing a small part of his rage to slap against their minds. Twisting his mouth in distaste, he pulled himself back, downing another finger of liquor. “Assuming they did want that. How many times in history has oppression  _prevented_ revolutions? The slavery of the Jews in Egypt? The peasant uprisings in medieval France? The bloody American and French revolts?” He took a breath and then another draw, swallowing his anger with the drink. 

“Even disregarding how  _wrong_ it is to oppress and control a group of people, “ he continued with another jab of enforced shame, “History has shown us again and again that it can’t be done indefinitely. In the face of oppression there is  _always_ revolution.” He took another finger of amber liquid, staring at the ceiling for a moment, waiting while their drink- and fear-addled minds absorbed his words before delivering his final statement.

“‘Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.’ If you won’t listen to me, gentlemen, perhaps you’d take advice from Albert Einstein?”

“Rita Mae Brown.” A woman’s voice, low and strangely sharp, cut in across the sudden silence just as Michael was opening his mouth to begin an angry retort to cover the shame chewing at his guts. Heads snapped up and around, a mingled rush of surprise and irritation and anger that rolled itself against Charles’s mind as the interruption again silenced the table, but the woman who’d interrupted turned away from the bar and regarded Charles with scant favor while giving his companions no notice at all.

“The quotation you are so clumsily mangling was composed by Rita Mae Brown, an American writer. Einstein, meanwhile, grew famous for categorizing and making popular the work of other men - names I’m sure you’ve never bothered to hear of. Joseph Larmor, 1897. Hendrik Lorentz, 1899 and 1904.” She paused, fingertips extended in a sharp gesture of emphasis, and he had perhaps a handful of seconds to look at her. She made a strange figure - lean and tall, dressed in a gray men’s blazer and waistcoat, a white blouse starkly devoid of frills of frippery, a plain gray skirt nearly long enough to cover her ankles. It drew out the sharpness of her cheekbones, the subtle hook of her nose, the tight thin press of the lips that were pale now with her displeasure. She should have been absurd, or at least dismissably plain, but she stared at them with such force that their unspoken disapproval was brushed aside like so many cobwebs. “If you are going to appeal to authority to support your absurdly broad and naive generalizations, appeal to a worthy one. Otherwise, keep your drunken pontificating to a reasonable quiet so we are not all made more foolish by it.”

Charles could feel his face--entirely without his initiative or approval--ranging through an absurd gamut of expressions that left him staring at his conversational interloper with brows lowered and mouth pursed around a question. His shock, indignation, embarrassment and pride continued their war behind his pensive facade while his brain raced to find ammunition against this aggravating woman.

Drawing a blank from his own mind, he cupped his chin in his left hand, first two fingers pressed firmly into his temple. He leaned forward slightly, concentrating on the woman, lightly surprised that she held his gaze without blinking. She continued her stare as he extended his abilities to find a flaw in her thinking or a weak point in her emotional state.

Moments passed.

“Go ahead, Charles, ask her out already. We know you like the intellectual types,” mocked Willis behind him.

For once, Charles wasn’t listening to his companions in any sense. He was focusing too closely on the woman, unable to believe his perceptions.

Despite all this considerable and unique attention he paid his adversary, he heard no thoughts, saw no memories or desires. For the first time in his life, a mind was completely closed to him.

There were plenty of people who were difficult to read or influence. Charles had had to exert particular effort on one of his nannies as a child, and he could always tell when a stranger or acquaintance had a mental resistance. They felt solid and hard to him, and seemed to echo his thoughts back to him if he touched their minds in the wrong way. He’d learned how to move in slowly, gently, inexorably, sinking past the resistance. With them it was only a matter of time and concentration.

Trying to read this woman--this striking, incisive, infuriating woman--was like trying to read a book whose print was dancing across the page and switching languages every other word. No matter how he concentrated or touched her mind, any real information or connection with her slipped away as soon as he thought he had purchase.

“You don’t make any sense,” he murmured to himself, sitting straighter and letting his hand fall away from his face. “Why don’t you make any sense?” He continued to stare at her, now deeply frustrated by the proximity of a mind he couldn’t interpret. That was probably the reason for what happened next. That, and the drink.

“Miss, please. I’m trying to enjoy an evening here with my colleagues,” he began, picking up McLeod’s drink and downing it in one go. “Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be typing something?”

Her face, if such a thing were imaginable, grew even sharper. It was a subtle tightening around the eyes, a narrowing of the hard mouth, a tilt to the line of her head that set her loosely curled brown hair spilling across her cheek to frame an expression that had not a single inch of give in it and carried enough contempt to strike Charles like a physical blow. He couldn’t feel her, didn’t need to - the weight of her cold anger was a tangible thing in the air to every sentient being in the pub who wasn’t too drunk to hold itself upright. There was a sudden silence as Wallis’s approving laugh trailed off into nothing, and when she drew herself up to her full height several of his companions actually physically recoiled from the flat emptiness of eyes which were, he noted apropos of nothing, a truly striking shade of green-brown. She let that stillness hang in the air for another handful of heartbeats, then spoke so quietly that the burning ice of her voice - all sharp consonants and rough German vowels - was only barely audible. “If Oxford has had the misfortune of educating as well as hiring you, sir, then I feel nothing but pity for whatever department must admit the responsibility for it. If a cab should happen to run you down in the street, I am sure it will be saving many future classes of students a grave misfortune. Good evening.”

She set her drink on the bar without glancing at it, turned on her heel, and walked through the crowd toward the door with such rigid dignity that it seemed only appropriate that every single man in her path made room for her to pass untouched. Charles had the sudden, irrational thought that if one of them had stumbled into her, he must surely have cut himself on her edges.

“Well,” began Sherman after a long, tense moment, “I should be getting back. Early morning tomorrow,” he murmured, collecting his coat and giving Charles a look of polite blankness. Charles nodded, still reeling. The other men made their own bland excuses that completely failed to mask their intense desire to get away from the newly-minted Professor Xavier. Charles didn’t blame them.

Closing his eyes, he let the alcohol fuzz his mind as much as it ever did. He relaxed his active mind and his usual defenses, allowing the muddled and pedestrian thoughts of the pub patrons to fill his skull. He’d have a dreadful headache in less than fifteen minutes, but he welcomed it if it could crowd out his humiliation.

In five minutes Charles had ceased caring about his colleagues’ reactions. The problem was that he still cared about his behavior. Even if Willis, McLeod, Sherman and Oldman let him live it down, he wasn’t sure he would let himself. He had been bested,  _twice_ , by a complete stranger, and a woman at that. Tonight was already becoming a livid, angry red place in his memory. 

Well, enough. He’d have plenty of time to wallow. Now he wanted to forget.

Ten minutes into his self-imposed mental gulag, he brought his shields up again. Putting on his most charming expression and doing his best to radiate casual sex appeal, he approached a female student who had just arrived. He smiled at her, glad to note her pleased nervousness.

After the usual and, if he did say so himself, rather effective “groovy mutant” pickup speech, he was pleased to steer a charmed, sweet, and pliable young woman back to his house on the outskirts of town. She was taken by his intellect, his eyes, and his apparently magical way of knowing what she wanted. He was taken by her ample breasts and currently refreshing mental transparency.

Charles bowled the girl over with his fervor and attentiveness, easily discerning how she liked to be touched. He lost himself in her soft curves, breathless moans, and glowing admiration that radiated from her like sunshine. By the time they were both blissfully exhausted, Charles had completely forgotten the sharp woman from the pub. He slept with one arm around the young student’s waist and his face pressed gently to the nape of her neck. He breathed in her scent with every inhalation and shared her docile dreams. Only much later would it occur to him that she was rather taller and more brunette than he tended to favor.


	2. Chapter 2

Charles decided, after due consideration, that it was just barely possible that he might get out of the library stacks without being spotted if he was very, very lucky.

It hadn’t exactly been his idea to enjoy a spot of afternoon ‘relaxation’ in the classical literature section of the Bodleian library, though he’d been content enough to go along with it when the pleasant young woman with whom he’d struck up a conversation over Cato had broadcast the idea rather loudly. Good idea or not, her excitement had been intoxicating and Charles had always had an adventurous streak. That she was also an excellent kisser had made the afternoon jaunt extremely worthwhile. True, some of her thoughts had run to a more...exotic taste than his, but it was easy enough to focus her surface thoughts on physical sensations.  Though, he had admitted to himself, he was now at least a little curious about the more passionate possibilities of historical re-enactment.

He’d been grinning to himself as he straightened his coat and tie, enjoying the thrill of undetected escape as he moved silently through the stacks. He was just about to congratulate himself on his own cleverness when he rounded a corner and ran head-on into someone carrying a rather tall stack of books.

Odd, that; usually he could sense someone coming, especially if they were preoccupied or carrying a precarious load. People tended to think rather loudly at such times. But this time he had been completely surprised which...

 _ Oh no. _ Charles’s heart sank.  _ Please no. _

His prayer was not heard. It was with an uncanny slowness that he saw the stack of books topple, raining down around him and the unfortunate researcher. As the highest books fell, he saw the sharp face of the woman from the pub shift from annoyance, to surprise, to outrage.  His own face went straight from surprise to outright horror.

“Oh, God, I’m so terribly sorry,” he blurted, “Are you alright, miss?”

She stood looking at him for a terribly long moment, her eyes glittering with such a fine and impressive display of wrath that he was afraid for at least a fraction of a second that a thunderbolt might reach down from the roof and strike him dead. They were barely inches apart, close enough that he could have brushed his hand across her hip with even the most accidental motion, and this close to her he was inescapably aware of a dozen insignificant details that snapped around his head like tiny steel traps. Her eyes were darker in the sharp light of the stacks, like stained emeralds, and there was a subtle flush across her cheekbones which was probably from anger that he was getting an excellent view of because she was wearing not a spot of make-up. In fact, other than a simple chain necklace around her throat, she was wearing no jewelry of any kind. It gave her a clean, unadorned clarity that scorned artifice of any sort and demanded to be taken for what it was - unique and unexpected. 

She took a single sharp step back, and the sudden distance was a strange shock - as though the temperature of the air had abruptly dropped a few degrees. “You.”

It was not exactly a hopeful opening. 

“Yes, um, well...” He began, floundering under her hard stare.  “Hello again.” He swallowed.  The woman raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms across her chest, which did not in any way bring Charles’s attention to the way her waistcoat hugged her bosom and shoulders in that position. He closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, trying to clear his mind enough to say something that would, somehow, fix the mess he had made. 

“Miss,” he said, forcing himself to meet her eyes again, “I’m terribly sorry for how I behaved at the pub.”  She continued to stare, seemingly dissatisfied. Being unable to tell what she was thinking alarmed him, especially in a tense situation like this.  No wonder people were so often anxious.

“I...I don’t know what got into me,” he lied, glancing at her from under his hair.  That usually worked as an apology to other women, not least because of the excellent position for expressions of sincere contrition in his blue, blue eyes. 

She didn’t appear impressed by his eyes, or by his contrition. That green-brown gaze measured him pitilessly, taking a thorough assessment of his face, and then that quiet alto murmur went to work like a well-honed scalpel. “About half a bottle of poor Scotch and a few pints of lager, I would guess, not to mention a fair dose of self-righteous arrogance and bruised pride. You are a very rude young man, Mister....” she paused for his name, her lip twitching upward expectantly. 

Completely pinned by her force of will in a fashion that made him feel like an unfortunate bug in a display case, Charles swallowed again, his mouth suddenly very dry. “Xavier. Charles Xavier.” He was overcome by a sudden, desperate need to know her name in return, but could not quite bring himself to ask.

“Xavier.” That hint of a German growl to her English gave his name a flat, hard crispness in her mouth that startled him. Her lips twitched again, a shadow of disapproval, and she went on in that same measured voice. “Well, Mister Xavier, you are a very rude young man and you ought to know better than to saunter about the stacks without watching where you are going. If I had the time, I would try to teach you some manners, but I do not think I wish to take the next twenty years away from my work to do it. To begin with, however, you might drink less and speak less. It could only help matters.”

Charles was very proud of himself that he did not speak the terrified  “Yes, ma’am,” that was sitting in the back of his throat. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to say much else.  

“Um,” he tried, pushing a hand through his hair again, looking down at the mess he’d made. Well, might as well  try  to redeem himself. 

“I’ll just...” he began to offer, looking at the full extent of the havoc, and became horrified in an entirely new and unexpected way.  All the blood drained from his face and his terrified eyes met hers for a split second before he dropped to his knees and began grabbing books like a drowning man grabs a rope. 

_ Oh god. Why couldn’t I have been born with invisibility? _

She watched him fumbling about with the books, sighed, and then knelt down carefully in her gray skirt and began methodically re-stacking the volumes spread around them with subtle sounds of disapproval at each discovered dent in the binding or bent page. She did not, thankfully, give any sign of having noticed his... indisposed state. When he had four volumes stacked haphazardly in his hands she carefully reached over and removed them from his fingers, adding them to the top of her stack, and then looked at him with a strange little smile as they knelt there on the floor with the books neatly towered between them. “You really are very young, Mister Xavier. Still, ‘ _ominium rerum principia parva sunt_ . ’” She scooped up her stack of books with practiced ease and glanced at him, waiting for him to move aside with an echo of that smile still tugging at the corner of her lips.

Charles stood, holding his hands in front of his unbuttoned trousers in a way that he hoped was casual and circumspect. He tried not to look at her as she moved down the aisle. 

“Ah,” he said, clearing his throat and trying to regain his normal voice, “Ciscero.” 

A pause stretched out. Charles swallowed. He knew this was the time to leave, but it was for some reason very difficult. All he managed was to glance around at the stacks, theoretically searching for a place to put  all  his clothes in order. After that he managed a step towards a dark corner, but he still hadn’t escaped whatever invisible force was rooting him to the spot. 

“Well, I’ll just be going, Miss...?”

She ignored the implied question, though she did stop at the end of the aisle. He had the distinct impression that she’d planned to do that whether he spoke or not, and the elegance with which she delivered her parting blow left no doubt on the subject. “That might be wise, Mister Xavier, though may I suggest that the next time you take some pretty young thing into the stacks to do something indecent you pick one who will have the good grace to check your clothes for you, since you obviously can’t be trusted with it.”

He was struck to the spot, immobile and speechless.  He didn’t regain the ability to move until a moment or two after she disappeared from view, at which point he hastily fixed his trousers and hid his face in his hands.  _So this is what dying of embarrassment feels like_ , Charles thought, leaning back against the shelves.  He closed his eyes and let out a long breath. Roughly dragging a hand through his hair, he cursed himself for being ten kinds of an idiot, then groaned at the possibility that the nameless woman would tell someone what she’d seen.  After that he indulged in a childish if silent tantrum at the unfairness of the situation.  And then he was left with nothing between him and the staggering implications of his two spectacular humiliations.

 _ If I can’t read everyone, I must learn to get on without it . _

He threw himself into motion, making directly for the library exit. 

_I must learn to be...ordinary, if only at certain times._ The thought, and the need, terrified him. He had no idea how to even begin. Reading people was something he had to concentrate  not  to do. And now he had to not read people and try to navigate social situations at the same time?

She could scold him all she wanted, and he knew she was right about some of what she’d said...but some days, if he was really honest with himself, the warm dullness of drink was the only thing that kept him from going mad in a city full of incessant thoughts. And he didn’t like to think about what he might do if he completely lost control. 

_ So, young, rude, drunk Charles, where to begin?  _


	3. Chapter 3

  


Sprawled in the armchair of his study, Charles cradled the phone against his shoulder, the March issue of the  _Journal of Heredity_ open on his lap, a tumbler of brandy in his left hand. Before dialing he glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, subtracting five hours. The Radcliffe dormitories had a nine o’ clock curfew, and the matron typically answered the phone until ten. He’d have plenty of time to talk.

“Good evening, Miss Ingles. This is Charles Xavier.  Is Raven available, please?” He took a sip as the middle-aged woman confirmed and went to fetch his “sister.” Something must have delayed them because he was able to read another paragraph in the article about catnip response before he heard the young woman’s voice tinnily through the transatlantic connection.

“Charles! How are you?” Even through the bad connection, he could hear Raven smile.  

“Glad to hear your voice, love. Have you been well? How are your studies?”

“My studies are fine. I’m enjoying the subject.”  She paused, an unspoken something behind her voice.  Charles was once again glad he didn’t need to read her.

“But?” He prompted. Raven sighed.

“But it’s hard being around all these people all the time.” Her voice was quiet, sad.

“I know, Raven.” Charles sighed. “I know. When we were kids you had to practice keeping up appearances for longer and longer,” he reminded her, “You made yourself stronger then. You can do it again now.”

“Thanks, Charles,” Raven murmured. “I just wish it wasn’t so exhausting.”

The weariness in her voice made Charles ache in his heart, both for his dear friend and himself. He wished, once again, that staying together had been in both their best interests. The two of them sorely missed the comfort of having someone they didn’t have to hide from.

“So,” Raven continued, forcing her voice to sound more upbeat, “How are things with you?”

Charles took another swallow of brandy before answering.

“Well...I’m completely upended, actually,” he admitted, gripping the phone rather harder than necessary. “I’ve met someone I can’t read, no matter how hard I try and...it turns out social situations are harder to navigate without my abilities.”

There was a long pause, and Charles began to worry that they’d lost the connection. Then he heard a muffled snort.

“Raven?” he asked, frowning, “Raven, what--”

The odd noise turned out to be laughter that Raven had failed to stifle.

“Charles Xavier, unable to charm someone?” She crowed, thoroughly amused. “Oh my god, Charles, who is it? I have to meet this person and give him a prize.” Her laughter broke off her words completely then, and Charles glared at his ceiling as he sat listening to Raven’s delight.

After a minute she started to wind down.

“Yes, thank you, I feel  so  much better now,” he sulked.

“Oh, don’t be like that Charles, you know I love you,” Raven soothed. “It’s just that getting to laugh at you is such a rare opportunity, I have to take it when I can.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“Now,” said a quickly-sobering Raven, “What are you going to do about this?”

Charles sighed. “Well obviously I have to learn how to socialize the hard way,” he ground out, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I just have no bloody idea how to go about doing it.”

“Don’t sulk,” Raven tsked.  There was a long pause as she thought. Charles read another paragraph about feline genetics.

“You can’t avoid reading people at least a little bit, not for long periods of time.” She began. “You’ve gone into every conversation you’ve ever had with privileged information about the other parties, so you’ve never had to learn how the rest of us do it.

“Distance can create a boundary...” she murmured to herself. “But how to get far enough not to hear but still close enough to practice?”

“That’s what’s confounding me,” Charles admitted. “I was hoping you’d have some ideas.”

“I’ve only got two, really,” Raven sighed. “One is to try to learn second-hand--listen to how other people do it, their thought processes while they’re interacting; maybe read some books on etiquette, watch films of social situations, get some psychology books. I can recommend a few if you’d like,” she offered.

“Yes, please do,” Charles accepted, pretending to write down the names Raven gave him. It was sweet that she wanted to help and he didn’t have the heart to point out that he could speak to any number of experts in psychology there in Oxford.

“The other idea,” Raven said mischievously, “I wish I was there to see.”

Charles got a sinking feeling.  “You don’t mean--”

“Practice on this person you can’t read. I’m sure he’ll tell you when you’ve made an ass of yourself.” Charles could almost see the flash in her eyes that Raven got whenever she was being particularly devious. He groaned.

“Yes, I’ve definitely gotten plenty of feedback on that subject,” he muttered. “Nothing else?”

“Sorry, Charles. That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll let you know if anything else comes to mind.”

He sighed again. “Thank you, love. I’ll call you again on Sunday, at our usual time.”

“Don’t get too discouraged, Charles,” Raven said. “You’re the most amazing person I know. You’ll figure this out.” The warmth in her voice buoyed his spirits and made him smile.

“I’m so proud of you, Raven, you know that? Radcliffe and psychology and nobody but us knows how much it takes.”

“You’re a good friend, Charles. I love you.”

“I love you too, Raven. Goodnight.”

After setting the receiver in its cradle, Charles let himself slump bonelessly in the chair, head resting on the back, eyes closed. He held his cool, empty glass to his forehead, trying to ride out the usual wave of loneliness he experienced every time he said goodbye to his only friend. If he was honest with himself, saying goodbye to Raven only reminded him of his perpetual loneliness.

He sat like that for a long time.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Charles looked dubiously at the door to the Physics Department offices. He might have been more hopeful, but not after the day’s wild goose chase.

He’d begun with Classics; the Latin quotations the sharp woman had used led him to suspect she was with them.  He’d even got his hopes up when the secretary had sent him through to the office of a woman who met his description. He approached with an awful mixture of hope and trepidation in his stomach that was soon replaced with disappointment. The thoughts he heard clearly belonged to someone else. He hadn’t even knocked on her door.

Next was Literature. Charles thought he remembered the woman quoting several works of literature at him in the pub. But faulty or reliable, his memory failed to lead him to her there. They hadn’t even employed a woman there for several years.

Charles had similar luck in the Theology, Philosophy, Foreign Languages, and History departments. He had been just about ready to give up when he remembered what she’d first said to him.  If she knew much about Einstein, then perhaps...

It seemed like such a long shot. Hardly any women were in the sciences.  But aside from prowling the library in all his spare time, he didn’t have any other ideas for finding her. 

Pushing the door open, Charles gave his best smile to the department receptionist. She was pretty enough that the smile came easily, with soft gold hair that she obviously considered her best feature, and the subconscious rush of pleasure she took in his arrival was as pleasant as warm spring air even if she  was  engaged. Still, there was no harm in helping an attractive young man, was there? Obviously not. She pushed away the small stack of paperwork which had been consuming her attention and smiled up at him, and the world seemed a little more like the place it ought to be. “How can I help you, sir?”

“Good afternoon, miss,” Charles replied, unable to resist a rather warmer tone than was entirely appropriate for the situation.  He very much enjoyed the girl’s soft surge of attraction.

“I’m looking for someone; I’m afraid I don’t have a name. I was hoping you could help me.” He looked at her with gentle, blue eyes, and knew that the secretary was willing to do almost anything to help him.

“Of course, sir.” She smiled up at him brilliantly, hands folded in a way that - though she might not have realized it - neatly concealed her ring. “If you’ll tell me a bit about him, I’m sure I can find who it is you’ve misplaced.”

“It’s a her, actually,” Charles began, silently defusing the secretary’s jealousy and disappointment. “Tall, dark curly hair, sounds German.” 

Before he had even finished his description he felt the girl’s surprise, saw the image of the sharp-tongued woman from the pub and library in her mind. Her eyes widened, the edge of jealousy vanishing in a wave of disbelief, and then she did the last thing on Earth he expected: she laughed at him. Not a long laugh or a rude one, but a single sharp explosive moment of laughter at the pure absurdity of the idea that he’d come here looking for that particular woman. Her thought was as clear in his head as if it were his own:  _The poor man_.  She got control of herself after a moment, but only outside - he could still taste the laughter ringing in her head. “Forgive me, Mister...?”

“Charles Xavier,” Charles replied politely despite inner turmoil of his own.

He’d finally found her--and he almost wished he hadn’t. In his more rational moments he knew he needed to learn how to function without his telepathy and that he needed help to do it. In that respect he felt that he could take care of this problem--take care of it and get back to normal.

In his less rational moments, he remembered: that night in the pub and how shocking and upsetting it had been to find someone’s mind illegible; how deeply humiliated he had been both there and at the library; the intensity of her stare and his strange inability to either behave well or pull himself away from her. He hated feeling out of control, hated needing help so badly and from a woman who’d seen him in some of his worse moments. But as much as he would have loved to avoid the whole thing, he couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn away.

 “And she is...?” he prompted, the secretary’s laughter adding to his discomfort.   

“If one of your friends sent you to meet Miss Lehnsherr, Mister Xavier, then they play very nasty pranks.” She gave him a generous smile, as though warning him off a bad patch of road or a rough part of town. “She’s Professor Weston’s laboratory assistant, you see, and she’s quite the terror - his graduate students draw lots to see who has to ask her for use of the lab equipment. Her office is outside the main laboratory downstairs, you see, so they can’t really sneak in to use it without her knowing. Are you quite sure I can’t arrange a meeting for you with Professor Weston or Professor Tomasi, instead?”

Charles pulled the visual map of the department layout from her mind as she talked, as well as a sort of pleased and communal incomprehension of Miss Lehnsherr.  _Well, at least I’m not the only one who can’t understand her_ _,_ he thought.  _Or does that make me more afraid?_

“No, thank you miss. You’ve been quite helpful.” As he left, he nudged a point in her mind that began a chain reaction of loving thoughts of her fiancee. May as well see  _someone_ in the department happy.

As he made his way back to the Biology department, Charles allowed himself a few minutes of private moaning.   _God, am I really going to do this?_ He was beginning to wonder if the madness hadn’t already started.

_I think I really am. Bugger._

 


	5. Chapter 5

The cool night air nipped at Erika Lehnsherr’s cheeks as she stepped out of the Clarendon Laboratory, and she tugged her long coat a little tighter around her shoulders. It was a man’s coat, thick and heavy and an unfashionably plain gray, but she preferred it that way. On a dark street, her hair bound back across the nape of her neck, it was easy enough to mistake her for a man unless one chose to look closely. It was better that way - safer, at least. She was long past letting a little prickled vanity stand in the way of useful, colorless anonymity. At the base of the steps, she took a lingering moment to look up and catch the cold and distant fire of the stars in her eyes. The wind tugged at her, fiercely enough that she had to reach up a gloved hand to hold her fedora firmly on her head, but she refused to be moved until she had sated herself on that vast and magnificent sky - the infinite motes of untouchable perfection scattered in that fathomless black like a promise. Erika Lehnsherr put very little stock in promises, from men or from God, but the stars had always kept their faith with her. They endured.

When she was finished, she set off down the street at a brisk walk that would have done any hiker or military man proud. She owned a car, of course - a modest one, and only reliable because she kept it so, but perfectly functional. Truth be told, she’d never quite grown comfortable with the thing. She’d grown up walking - hurrying along streets and avoiding eyes or being marched from one barracks to another, she sometimes allowed herself the dark jest that she had spent more of her youth on her feet than in anything which might even charitably be described as a bed. So the car remained in the small garage in the town which she paid to keep it, and each evening she walked the five miles out of the heart of the University of Oxford and across Magdalen Bridge to her small brownstone flat in Cowley. When the weather was too foul, she simply crossed to one of the dormitory halls and made use of one of the few empty rooms that the staff kept ready for just such an occasion. They knew her there, and the housekeeper’s daughter would often offer to share some warm tea and biscuits with Miss Lehnsherr before bed. It was a small kindness, but Erika treasured it. She was not, after all, much accustomed to them.

  
The wind picked up as she crossed Holywell Street, tugging at her skirts, and she resisted the urge to curse at herself for taking the time to visit the library when it was already so late in the evening. It was a foolish little errand, and would have been quite impossible for most of the students and professors of Oxford since the Bodleian was quite closed at this hour, but she had no trouble letting herself in and finding the small volume she wanted before locking up after herself and setting off toward the High Street at a brisk clip. She had, after all, promised Samuel that she would go home as soon as was practicable.

He had come down the laboratory before leaving for the day, as was his habit, and found her as he had become accustomed to finding her of late: stripped of her jacket and with her shirt sleeves rolled up far enough to expose the hard green lines of the numbers that began three inches above her wrist and stopped just below her elbow, her hands buried inside the casing of the high-energy laser she was building from scratch because she had found the models designed by Maiman at Hughes Research and Mister Hall at General Electric to be inadequate for the Unified Field Theory experiment she was designing. The trouble was in the interface between the semiconductor and the cooling system, and it had finally begun to irritate her a few hours before he had interrupted with his knock at the door. She hadn’t even taken her hands out, simply called for him to enter, and he had let himself in and settled on one of the chairs to watch her work with his usual air of comfortable patience. Samuel Weston was a man who, despite his profession, seemed either ignorant of the concept of entropy or disinclined to put much effort into caring about it. He would wait for a solution with the patience of an ancient stone Buddha, and with about as much sign of displeasure at the prospect. It was one of the traits that had kept them working well together for almost a decade now, and Erika appreciated it immensely.

“Ought to have it done tomorrow, Samuel. I’ll finish the rest of the materials required by Thursday, and lay out the formal planning before the weekend. I ought to have you the results and my calculations by some time next month.” She had finally eased her hands out of the narrow tube and considered it a moment, then had turned in her chair and given him a smile that was dryly fond. “I presume that you’ve come to tell me that more of your graduate students require the lab and can’t summon the bottom to ask me themselves?”

“It might have come up, yes.” He had chuckled, folding his hands in his lap, and had favored her with one of those subtle smiles which usual proceeded a well-worn aphorism. He hadn’t disappointed her, either. “You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Erika.”

“Which might be important, were I interested in catching flies.” She had wiped her fingers to clean them, then caught the gleam in his eyes and given him a hard stare that would have sent most of his colleagues running for their lives. “What are you gloating over, Samuel? If you say nothing, I shall have to ruin a perfectly good torsion bar by wrapping it around your neck.”

He had shrugged, unmoved, and when she sighed with exasperation he had gone on as if her displeasure were merely a light shower to be brushed off his jacket. “Seems a young man came by the offices looking for you today - Delia said his name was Xavier, which I imagine means that he’s actually Charles Xavier of the Biology Department and one of our newer professors. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re admitting suitors again?”

She had buried her own considerable surprise behind a tight smile, giving him a look that offered scant approval. “Even if I were, which I am not, he would be the last man in Oxford I would consider. His rudeness and lack of wit are, as far as I can see, exceeded only by his poor behavior when it comes to liquor and women. A callow, arrogant and careless young man, I should say.”

“Then you would be quite wrong.” Her head had come up rather sharply at that, but Samuel had gone on with a calmness that forestalled her temper as surely as a bucket of water doused a stove. “I’ve met young Xavier, as it happens, and while he is very young and very American, there is certainly nothing wrong with his brain. His thesis on the evolution of _homo sapiens_ was well-reasoned and thoughtful, and he makes quite convivial conversation as well. I can’t speak to the women or the wine, of course, but they are a young man’s vices and I imagine he’ll grow out of them like the rest of us.”

She had bitten her tongue and changed the subject, then, because she was well aware that a full description of her views on young Mister Xavier would have sounded positively shrewish to a man who she considered one of her few close friends. If she’d misjudged the young man, it was hardly unfair to him - the opinion of one lowly female researcher certainly wasn’t going to turn his future or peace of mind on end, and he’d given her more than enough cause for the one she held. Still, the firmness of Samuel’s reproof had stuck in her mind, and when she’d finally left the lab six hours later she had resolved on a small test of her own judgement. It wouldn’t do any harm, after all, to prove that her disapproval had been justified.

Turning up her own street at last, Erika let herself in the side gate and went up the back stairs to her flat with her shoulders slightly hunched to ward off the chill, unfastening all three of the locks with care before ducking inside and turning on the electric lamps that bathed her tiny parlor and modest front room in pale white light. It was not a large space, made smaller by the old library shelves she’d acquired second-hand and filled with as many books as she could afford, but the furniture was comfortable and the predominance of clean metal in its construction pleased her. Everything in its place, and a place for everything - home at last.

She hung her coat and hat neatly on the black iron coat rack, laying the slender book she’d carried from the library in the narrow shelf built into the wall beside the door to the kitchen as she passed, and frowned at the chill in the air. She crossed to the small iron stove in one corner of the front room, opening it, and sighed. As she’d suspected, the coals had gone out. It took a few minutes to add wood to the stove and get it burning properly, by which time she was beginning to shiver despite the protection of her blazer. She took the kettle from the top of the stove and filled it with fresh water, returned it to its usual place on the slow-warming iron, then left the stove to its work so that she could consult her small pantry and the old refrigerator which had been tucked against the back wall of the kitchen. She settled on eggs, bacon and the diced remains of a potato she was reluctant to part with, reminding herself firmly to see the grocer the next day so she would have a proper supply of food in the house. By the time she had finished cooking her meal and serving it onto a plain china plate, the kettle had begun to cry for attention, and she fixed her tea neatly with the small set on the sideboard by the window before carrying the cup and saucer back to the table in the dining room where her food was waiting. She ate quickly and carefully, with a thoroughness that let not a single crumb escape, and when she was finished she cleaned the plate and the frying pan before replacing them in their respective homes. She collected her tea, transferring it to the small lamp table beside the old and comfortable leather chair which she’d received as a gift from Samuel only a few months after she had come to work for him, and finally crossed to the shelf where she’d laid her evening’s prize to retrieve the leather-bound volume on which gold leaf shaped the words _Dispossession and Depopulation: The Interaction of Evolving Populations Within the Genus Homo_ and the smaller notation of the author’s name: Charles Xavier.

Erika sipped her tea, opened to the first page, and then began her dissection.


	6. Chapter 6

It was unquestionably the right office. Even if he hadn’t been able to feel her in the lab next door like a little pocket of static when he concentrated, the whole character of the modest room would have given it away as belonging to the woman he now knew was named Erika Lehnsherr - plain furniture, walls undecorated and mostly covered by the old, metal-ribbed library bookshelves that were tidily rowed by rank after rank of scientific texts and journals, a solid working desk of dull silver metal that was probably cheap steel. It was the office of a technician, an experimenter, one of the craftsmen of physics who could conduct the tests that fed the theorists on the floors above. It was severe, efficient and took no pains to appear anything other than functional and tidy. 

It was, in short, exactly like her. 

Charles stood a step or two away from the door to the lab. He counted five breaths, inhalations and exhalations. He could only delay the conversation, not stop it. For each of the three days since he’d discovered Miss Lehnsherr’s name and whereabouts, Charles had been hounded nearly constantly by the idea of her presence, by the possibility of what she and her mental white noise could mean. He wasn’t in control of his plans anymore. He found himself unable to avoid coming to the physics laboratory any more than he could avoid hearing loud thoughts. 

_May as well dive in._ He knocked on the door.

“Wait!” Her voice came through the door with sufficient authority and volume to suggest that anyone who dared to disobey could expect to meet a grisly fate, and for a long ten minutes or so that was the only answer he recieved. Then the door swung open and she was there, chalk on her fingers and her hair tightly bound at the back of her neck, and she looked him up and down with a mixture of surprise and displeasure that compressed her lips into what was becoming a very familiar thin line. He half-expected her to throw him out on the spot, with the result that it was something of a surprise when she stepped back from the door and gave a sharp wave of her hand that might as well have hauled him forward by physical force. “You may as well come in,  _Professor_ Xavier, since I can hardly leave the young Napoleon of the Biology Department standing in the hallway like a landed fish. Find a chair and touch nothing - is that clear?”

_Napoleon? Fish?!_ “Quite.” Charles sank carefully onto an unyielding metal chair near the door, eyes drawn to Miss Lehnsherr and the dismantled apparatus on the table. He watched with growing fascination--and, he had to admit, admiration--as she rinsed her fingers and then set to work, adding pieces here, twining wires there. All her movements were precise, unadorned but graceful nonetheless for their almost perfect economy of motion. Despite having no idea of either the nature or purpose of the equipment, Charles wasn’t bored and didn’t even realize that he usually would be. When the physicist finally seemed satisfied with her work and turned her attention to him, he had barely felt the passage of time.

Erika wiped her hands carefully, cleaning them, and she had to admit that in spite of herself she was at least a little impressed by his patience. She was well aware that her habit of insisting on finish her work before beginning conversations struck most of the professors as either arrogant or rude, and she’d expected some interruption from him. At the least, she’d anticipated he would be fidgeting in his chair like a schoolboy kept after class. Instead, he was sitting there with those striking blue eyes and watching her as though he hadn’t anything else in the world to think about. Before she’d read his work, she might have put it down to simple empty-headed foolishness, but if there was one thing she now knew very clearly indeed it was that Charles Francis Xavier possessed a very fine and well-honed brain under his soft, loose hair, however poorly he might be putting it to use when he wasn’t working. She crossed the room and poured herself a cup of tea from the small side-table, then grudgingly poured another for him and deposited it in front of him with sharp precision. A bit of sugar and a bit of cream followed on both sides, and then she leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest in a gesture that was only slightly less imposing for want of the blazer hanging in her office. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was mild and polite enough that someone who wasn’t listening closely might have missed the hard core of iron under it. “I don’t often have social visitors in my laboratory. You could have saved yourself a great deal of trouble by simply leaving a card and the reason for your visit with our secretary a few days ago.” 

_Not after what I saw in her mind._ Charles frowned thoughtfully.  _Not when I think I would have gone mad from waiting if you’d ignored me._

“You’re right,” he said aloud, slowly turning the teacup in his elegant hands. “You’re right about many things,” he admitted, meeting Miss Lehnsherr’s stare with an intensity of his own that he rarely allowed to show. 

“I’m a bit wild and terribly rude.” His lips quirked up at one corner, a wry laugh at himself. “I’ve never particularly needed social graces until now.”

“I am not quite so old yet that I am unaware that one can go far in the world on a pretty pair of blue eyes and a charming smile.” In spite of herself, her own lips twitched with unexpected humor. At the back of her mind, she allowed herself to admit that they were, in fact, very striking blue eyes and that she could understand how a young woman might let herself be made a fool of by eyes like that. She, naturally enough, knew better. “I imagine that when one has money and brains, as well, that the excuse of being an energetic young American can carry one even further.”

Charles laughed, enjoying that she was playing with him. He kept hidden the edge of sadness that alluded to his old, tired desire to truly show himself to someone. 

“You see my problem.” He sipped his tea, holding the cup like a tumbler. ‘“In all seriousness, Miss Lehnsherr, you are one of the few people who  _do_ see my problem. I was hoping you could help me.” He looked up at her and then away, his previous awkwardness returning.

“Help you.” Some of Erika’s amusement faded, a wary guardedness coming into her eyes, but she had to confess that it was the very last thing she had ever expected him to say to her. At the very least, it piqued her curiosity. “How, Mister Xavier, do you propose that I should help you?”

“Come to dinner with me,” Charles found himself saying to his own pole-axed surprise. “Dine with me and teach me manners.”  _ I asked her to dinner. She’s going to eat me alive, I can’t believe I asked her to  dinner , where did that come from?!  _ A silence began to stretch out. Charles fell his face start to burn. Another moment and he set his cup down, taking a breath to excuse himself.  _And then go jump in the river, or spend the next week at the pub. Possibly both._

“Very well. Dinner.” She was watching him with those dark green and brown eyes again, her expression as unreadable as the tumbling buzz of her thoughts, and he had been so sure of her refusal that she had half-finished her next sentence before the answer caught up with him. “It has been some time since I’ve taken dinner in company, and if it will keep you from interrupting me in the laboratory then I suppose I shall have to concede. I warn you, however, that you had better not expect a pleasant evening if you carry on as you did in the Eagle and Child.”

Charles blinked rapidly several times, trying to get a grip on this entirely unanticipated course of events. “Uh. Right. Of course not.” He paused again, staring helplessly at Miss Lehnsherr before realizing that there was more he had to contribute. “So...Friday? I’ll meet you at seven?” 

“That will be acceptable. I will be on the steps of this building at seven sharp, and I will expect to see you there. I do not intend to wait long, so be punctual.” She studied him, fighting down a laugh at the unbalanced surprise written across his face, and couldn’t quite resist cracking a small crop of wit across his brow. “I confess, I expected the author of  _Dispossession and Depopulation_ to be rather cleverer in conversation. It was an admirably well-written piece of work, and it is chiefly on the strength of it that I have decided to continue our... acquaintance at all. I do hope you will prove a bit more worthy of the work than you’ve seemed.”

Under more normal circumstances-- _Not that anything about this woman is normal_ \--Charles would have been unsettled by a remark like that. Apparently, he had reached the absolute limit of bewilderment. It felt almost zen-like.

“I’m no Napoleon, but I’ll see what I can do,” he smiled, standing. “Good night, Miss Lehnsherr.”

As he turned to leave, he felt the lightest buzz of a satisfaction not his own. He brought a hand to his temple. There, yes--emotion faintly sensed, and scratchy like a poorly-tuned radio, but definitely there. No words yet, nor images, but maybe that was only a matter of time. Perhaps the dragon of the physics department wasn’t so incomprehensible, after all. 

Just before the door closed, he caught the soft and bemused edge of her laughter. It reminded him irresistibly of the anticipatory purr his nanny’s old mouser had always given right before pouncing on some particularly unfortunate rodent. Her voice, as it turned out, carried perfectly clearly through the door even in a quite mild tone. “Good night, Professor Xavier. I would ask you not to do anything indiscreet before Friday, but I doubt that will be possible. I shall content myself with demanding that you not be caught at it so obviously that I should be ashamed to be seen with you.”


	7. Chapter 7

Breathing in steam and filling himself with the sound and feel of the water on his skin, Charles reflected that Miss Lehnsherr needn’t have worried. Charles had felt himself inexorably pulled towards Friday evening the way he had felt himself pulled towards the physics laboratory. He’d glided through his usual schedule with his true interest elsewhere. Neither at the pub nor in the dark hours in his study had he drunk with his typical thoroughness. And despite feeling flares of attraction blooming in a number of girls he had said no more than the dictates of politeness.

As always, he had calmed the minds of the distressed as he moved through the town and the days. It surprised him a little how easy it was. Even with less direct concentration and more mental noise born of sobriety the wash of thoughts weren’t drowning him anymore. He wasn’t sure what to make of that. He couldn’t dare to hope that this was somehow permanent.

As he shaved he wondered what he would do. Though he’d been able to sense some of Miss Lehnsherr’s emotions in the lab, he knew he couldn’t rely on reading her, even if it wouldn’t defeat the purpose of this outing. He’d utterly failed to charm her with his usual lines and expressions; she was entirely uninterested in the dashing socialite. He palmed his jaw from either side, checking for cuts or missed spots. Besides the telepathy and the charm, he didn’t have anything else.

 _Well_ _._ He looked himself gravely in the eye.  _I’ve got the truth._

He couldn’t show  _all_ of the truth--impossible. But he’d let her see more than the smile and what everyone wanted to hear. 

He dressed in one of his nicer grey suits, a cream-colored shirt, and tie the shade of the sky just after sunset. He couldn’t resist the last bit of vanity; he knew how it made his eyes even more compelling. And it wasn’t cheating, not really. Anyone could put on flattering tie.

Small silver cuff links, hair combed, a tiny smidge of aftershave. Pulling on his coat and checking his watch, he smiled to himself. Plenty of time, and he was reasonably sure Miss Lehnsherr wouldn’t be ashamed of him. He strode out into the crisp October evening, once again amazed at how different the world was with a new focus.

***

Erika Lehnsherr gave the papers on which she’d laid her latest experiment one final look, glanced up at the clock, then tucked them into the desk and stood to reach for her coat. It was the work of a bare moment to collect her umbrella - gray canvas stretched across black metal bones - and her hat, to lock her office door and start up the steps at a brisk trot. She had consciously chosen not to change her dress today, selecting the same gray skirt-suit and waistcoat over the same white blouse and dark tie that she always wore; if young Mister Xavier had any trouble with the idea, that was no concern of hers. Still, she was not quite immune enough to vanity not to check her reflection in the glass of the department secretary’s office and run a thin steel comb through the dark curls of her hair. It would not, after all, do to look harried or rushed.

As justifications went, she’d made better, but she elected not to think about that at any great length. Once her hair was in order and bound back up off the nape of her neck, she replaced her hat on her head and walked down the last half-flight of stairs to the door to let herself out into the cool evening twilight. She didn’t need to glance at the pocketwatch tucked into her waistcoat to know that it was seven o’clock exactly, and a part of her was nearly certain that young Xavier was about to miss his opportunity entirely.

She was wrong about that, as it turned out, and when he turned to look up the stairs toward her she found herself stopped in place with such force that it trapped her breath in her chest. It was a small mercy and a lifetime of experience in such things that kept her surprise off her face, that kept her gaze a cool evaluation even as her thoughts struggled to untangle themselves from a single shocked murmur:  _Not what I expected._

Charles held both hands behind him and looked up at the physicist. She looked unchanged from any of the other times he’d seen her, incongruously solid and enduring in a soft academic world. Her expression and her static were the only perceptible differences. The first was still severe but not disapproving; the last felt a bit different now, a new set of shifting symbols and fluctuating radio waves.

Charles smiled, uncalculated. “Good evening, Miss Lehnsherr.”

“Mister Xavier.” The answer was automatic, a reflexive courtesy, and there was a strange absent warmth to it as she looked down at him. Examined him. Drank in the sight of him, if she were to be honest, the way she drank in a difficult theorem or an unexplained phenomena she intended to solve. Whatever - whoever - she had expected to find standing on these steps, it wasn’t this. A spoiled young American dilettante, perhaps, looking for one more conquest. A drink-sodden hedonist with a fine mind gone to waste and no more sense than to chase after the first challenge to cross his path. A foolish boy. Any of those, she’d been ready for.

This was something else entirely.

He looked up at her with those brilliant blue eyes and there was no artifice in that young, open face. No reflexive squirm to conceal himself, no calculated tilt of his head to show himself off to best advantage, no insecure fumbling of words or expressions to win her approval. No fear. She knew without speaking, without being told, that he would stand there watching her and allowing her to watch him until she was ready to speak, and he would take those words as best he could - unsteadily, uncertainly, but expecting nothing from her. It was written in his face, and though every fiber of her being and her experience protested that it was an impossibility she found that she believed it. Believed him. In a moment, a day, a year - then he might fall short, prove just another grasping, self-centered man too caught up in his own gratification to be worthy of trust, but not today. Not at this moment.

She had paused for less than a breath, and yet it seemed as though they had been standing there since the beginning of everything. Her voice was soft now, the German harshness of her accent muted to a mild roughness, and her lips curved in the shadow of a smile. “I believe you intended to escort me to dinner. I trust you have been able to manage a plan for that purpose?”

Charles pointed over his shoulder with one thumb. “There’s a nice French place on Little Clarendon. I got us a table.” He watched, wondering, as she descended the steps. Her nearly-pleased expression was a maddening tease of connection. Charles felt both a desperate desire to know her mind and a deep enjoyment of the mystery. Miss Lehnsherr was a riddle, a gene unwilling to give up its secrets. Somehow he felt he could wait and coax them out of her the way he unraveled biological mysteries.

He offered his arm. The other minds of Oxford faded into a background hum. She put her arm across his, gloved fingers resting just above his wrist, and they set off down the street looking for all the world like two old friends out for a walk. It was a strange thing, the way their strides fell into cadence - hers quicker and sharper, his longer and looser, both together matched down to the length of a millimeter. They were well past the end of the block before either of them spoke, and yet the silence had not passed uncomfortably. A sort of quiet stillness held, instead, and it pushed the world back around them as though to impose that same stillness on everything else.

“Do you really believe in the possibility of another species-defining mutation within our lifetimes, or was that merely something you wrote to draw attention to your paper?” she said at last, as though it were the most natural question in the world for a chill Friday evening in October.

Charles flushed, looked hard at Miss Lehnsherr. “Whatever _else_ I might do for attention,” he replied, voice tight, “I don’t sully my work with it.” He looked away. “In fact I--”

He missed a half-step.  _No, can’t tell, impossible_ _._ “I’m quite sure my theories are sound.” He swallowed, trying to recover equanimity. In a softer voice, he turned the question back to her. “Do you have opinions on the topic?”

“I found your paper quite enlightening, in fact.” She was looking at him now, not at the street ahead, and there was a hint of respect in her demeanour at how much sincere horror had burned in his voice at the idea of allowing petty personal concerns to interfere with scientific truth. As though somehow he’d passed a test he hadn’t even known he was being given. “The whole idea is remarkably exciting. If you are correct, and species-wide mutations occur in clusters or waves rather than breeding from a single individual, then it would be possible that latent or active carriers of a new genetic destiny could be spread all over the world at this very moment. Still, it seems implausible that there would have been no precursors - no early examples of the genetic configuration needed for this new  _homo superior_. Surely such signposts would have to have existed, given the infinite variety of mutations before the critical selection began to blossom?”

“I believe they already exist.” At her display of interest and incisive question, Charles felt his anger fade to be replaced by excitement.

“There are theories that some of the pagan deities, demigods, or rulers could have been members of a human-like, genetically advanced species. Currently there are daily unexplained phenomena around the world.”  _And I added my blue sister into my mother’s memory when I was twelve._ “We have plenty of evidence of constant mutation in the human genome. It truly is only a matter of time.” Charles smiled to himself. He could see a world where he and Raven didn’t have to hide. He saw a world where they weren’t alone.

 _And only a small matter of time after that before such people would be hunted down, rounded up and exterminated. How could a species begin to protect itself, to grow beyond those first faltering steps, in the face of all the modern machinery of suppression and destruction? Can evolutionary advantage really count for so much?_ Erika turned the thought over in her mind, a cold spike of anger curling through her at the idea of another race brought to the edge of extermination or beyond by tinkers and tailors and soldiers - not of a single nation, this time, but of a whole genetically obsolete species.  _It cannot be tolerated, and yet what could a scattered few do?_

 __They had passed a few more buildings in silence, each to their own thoughts, when she spoke again. “Would it be possible to identify such a group by their genetic chemistry - by something in the blood, perhaps? Or would searchers be dependent on searching only for external phenomena like the changes in a _sapiens_ skull compared to their predecessors’?”

Charles remembered the day six years ago when he’d drawn blood from himself and Raven. He’d done every conceivable test on the samples, working relentlessly until they were complete. She’d complained about the number of samples required, and Charles himself could still clearly remember the ache in his left arm. All the tests had told him only one thing.

“ _If_ you knew what you were looking for, and _if_ you had a complete map of the human genome, you could do it,” he told her. “But we’re two or three decades from the gene identification, and probably even further from the map.” It made him a little sad. Sometimes he despaired over how difficult it would be to find others without wide-ranging data. He always held out hope, though. He knew he and Raven couldn’t be the only ones.  _Time._

 __Relief so intense that it nearly buckled her knees rolled through Erika, and she let out a breath she hadn’t actually realized she was holding. _If he is right, if it isn’t just a few scattered anomalies, there will be time. Time to reach out, to gather, to make plans in secret. To pass unseen and unheard, unknown, until the future is ready to defend itself._

 __She heard herself ask the question before she was even aware her lips were moving, and it stiffened her spine again sharply to realize how telling it might be. “How many of this new species, then, would you imagine might develop in those decades? How many individuals with the new genetic make-up?”

Charles felt the physicist's hum change pitch. He pursed his lips in thought. “I would say...in the next decade we could expect one _homo superior_ born for every hundred thousand _homo sapien,_ give or take. In thirty years you might see one in, oh, ten thousand? Pure speculation, mind you.” He looked sideways at his companion, trying to discern her thoughts in her face. “And there will be a tipping point some time in the next  hundred years, after which the populations will change inversely at an exponential rate.”

“‘Like a genetic switch which signals to the whole collective the need for a phase change state.’ I wondered if that was what you meant.” Her expression was closed, controlled, but there was a fire in her eyes that seemed to illuminate her whole face like a half-enclosed candle shining through its wax containment. She had switched the umbrella to the hand resting on his arm almost unconsciously, and now the free right hand had begun a series of sharp, almost percussive gestures in answer to the invisible urgency of her thoughts. “Your paper is silent as to what differences they might have with  _homo sapiens_ , save to speculate that it would have to be something profound - as profound as the increase in intelligence and sophisticated tool use that separated the  _sapiens_ from  _neanderthalensis_ \- and yet would, by your own admission, have to have been at least partially invisible to common perception. What would distinguish this...  _homo superior_ , then? What would be their birthright?”

Charles felt himself unable to look away from her profile. The loneliness and the desire to show himself rose up into his throat and threatened to move the words from his lips or broadcast the thought. The fact that he knew next to nothing about Miss Lehnsherr wasn’t a dampener of his impulse but rather fuel; his whole life had been like looking at the world through a one-way mirror, and suddenly he found himself with someone who saw more of him than anyone but Raven. It would be incredibly risky; he couldn’t feel how she would react and if she reacted badly he couldn’t change her memory. He had to be able to read a person before he could do anything else.

Anyway, in this case he didn’t even  _want_ to clean things up his usual way.

 _Without the possibility of failure, choices mean nothing,_ he suddenly remembered. He took a breath, set his jaw, and spoke.

“Abilities.” He watched her face, felt the pulse of her static, detected the slight jump. “Unlike any previously seen. I’m...” he swallowed, faltering, “I’m afraid I can’t be more specific than that. There’s no way to tell how variable these abilities could be, or what they might look like.” He glanced at her, making sure his mouth was closed and she was looking.  _Maybe like this?_ he dropped the thought into the hum of her mind, hoping and fearing she would hear him.

She blinked, half-turned as though searching the street for a distant sound, then shook it away and turned back to him with that same intense regard. If she had heard him, she gave no other sign of it. “Do you think those abilities will be enough, then? Enough to keep them safe, to let them survive and thrive the way the  _sapiens_ have?”

He turned to stare forward at nothing, thinking rapidly. She had heard, but not clearly, just like he couldn’t read her. Disappointing but hopeful; if he could learn to read her he could learn to be heard. He’d already gained some ability in discerning her emotions.

 _And wh en did I start thinking about the long term? _ _I’m damn lucky she doesn’t realize what’s going on. I don’t have a mess to deal with._ He was silent for several steps, looking up at the stars. He inhaled slowly, frowning slightly. “Again, I don’t know exactly what kinds of abilities the new species would have,” Charles replied. “If they enhance survival--as I believe they do and will--then the species will be successful. I suppose there could be outliers that manifest abilities harmful to themselves, but given the emergence of the forerunners it would seem that the mutation in question is biologically successful.”

“That won’t be enough.” That hand came up again, sharp and quick, and he caught it in the corner of his eye as the frustration flashed across her face. As though he were missing some obvious point. “They’ll be different, powerful. Feared. They’ll have to compete with not just the biology of  _homo sapiens_ but all the tools of the dominant species of the planet as well. They won’t need just a slight edge - they’ll need weapons, like a tiger’s claws and teeth. Tools to survive.” 

Charles frowned again. “I don’t believe it will come to that.” He spoke quietly, felt the now-familiar buzz change pitch again. And now, because of her questions and the sound of her voice, he understood it as fear. There was something else, too, something...

“Miss Lehnsherr,” Charles began slowly, his whole form subdued with apprehension, “How long have you been in England?”

She stopped, there in the street, so sharply that he nearly stumbled as her arm came away from his and she stood looking at him with those piercing eyes and an expression that was as cold and hard as iron. For a long moment there was nothing else - only the darkness, the chill of the air and the impossible crackle of her unreadable emotions. Finally, quietly, she bit off the words. “I came to England in April of 1948.”

Charles met her stare with his own, eyes full of an unbearably compassionate sadness. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then, a step closer to her. “It’s over,” he promised. His whole being was a promise, somehow. Somehow, without her even noticing, he had gone from a drunken cretin to the warmest light in the darkness.

Her whole being cried out at the touch of that light, and she could not have said if it was in rage or longing. It took her breath from her, forced her a half-step back, and then her hand came up across his face in a slap driven by muscles honed by pain and privation and terror, muscles kept taut by fear and fury. “Over?” The word exploded out of her in a rush of breath, grating through her teeth, and her eyes seared into his as his head snapped back around toward her. “The months before I came to England, the papers were full of the news of Jews dying in Palestine at the hands of their neighbors. A month after I came, the month in which the nation of Israel was reborn, her neighbors attacked her and spent a year slaughtering as many of her people as they could. For more than twenty years, I have watched my people spit on and tormented and slaughtered for the crime of being  _different_. It will  _never_ be over - not for my people, not for your mutants, not for the Communists or the anarchists or anyone who dares to be different from the mass of ‘plain’ and ‘sensible’ humanity who call themselves words like ‘normal’ and ‘decent.’ As long as we are weak, as long as we are few, as long as we are feared or hated, we will be hurt and cast aside and eventually slaughtered so that the  _common_ man can be safe.”

Her eyes were ablaze, her cheeks flushed, her teeth bared behind her smile, and there was a terrible beauty in the way it transformed her face - as though she were bleeding electrical current into the air itself with the weight of her anger. Her gaze scalded him, and yet would not let him go. She trembled with the force of it, and her voice nearly broke when it dropped to a whisper. “You are a fool, Xavier, if you think anything else. I will not tolerate your pity, so if you think to offer it I shall tell you to save your time and be damned already.”

Charles found his heart beating frantically as her anger flared out around her like light, like radiation, strong and different from any other emotional expression he’d experienced. The force of her crashed all the way through him, setting all his nerves tingling, buzzing on his skin, making him feel more physically alive than ever before. He imagined his cells vibrating, his molecules spinning wildly. He brought a hand to his cheek, the sting faint compared to the lightning in his blood.

“I apologize for offending you,” he said, swaying slightly, dazed, but still able to respond to her argument. “People are more than fear and hate.”

 _But not much more. Not always more. Not safely more._ Erika reached out to steady him on reflex, found him entirely too close to her, found words spilling out of her in spite of herself. “You can’t trust them to be. Still … I shouldn’t have slapped you. For that, anyway.” 

As she apologized he felt her anger drain from both of them. She was once again a multi-tonal vibration in his mind. His body was slowing back to normal. It felt uncomfortably like loss.

She was aware of him, intensely aware of him, as though he were a crackle of lightning in the air that was arcing to her body across the line of her arm. It frightened her, and that stiffened her in place. She would not run - not from this young, naive American boy. She would not run.

She spoke, instead. “We are going to be late to dinner, Charles.”

Her use of his given name and his answering, brilliant smile surprised both of them a little. “Shall we go, then?” It was almost as if the fear and anger had never been.

This time, instead of offering his arm, he held out his open hand.

After another small eternity, she took it. Smiled - a careful smile, not broad at all, but with an exasperated warmth in it that lingered. Began to walk again, with that sharp quick stride of hers. Laughed. “It seems we are going to spend a lot of time arguing.”

“‘No great advance was ever gained without controversy.’’’ He grinned. “We’ll be on the cutting edge for sure.”

She chuckled, softly, and they passed around the turn onto Clarendon with their hands still joined as the stars wheeled above them with infinite patience. The argument was abandoned for now, if not forgotten; they had, after all, world enough and time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Fantasy nonconsent; general sexism.

Charles sat in a lazy, contented slouch as he nursed two fingers of whiskey--slowly--and listened to the other new professors complain about students and debate topics both trivial and heavy. The last traces of sunset splashed across a smattering of clouds. Students strolled up and down the street, bright spots of color and emotion that, in his present mood, seemed like beautiful birds or exotic flowers. The minds of the town’s inhabitants were background noise, white noise; he hadn’t gotten a telepathy-related headache in weeks.

He was only half-listening to his companions, wrapped in his own thoughts. Over the course of the past three dinners with Erika, her emotions had become more and more familiar to him. He was able to interpret four or five distinct hums; emotional ambiguity was harder, like listening for each separate note in a musical chord. His range of perception was improving, too: if he concentrated, he could feel where she was in the university (usually the lab, sometimes the library), and knew the general location of her home.

He thought that he was learning something about functioning without telepathy, though sometimes he feared that even without her maddening opacity she was so different from most people that his hard-won skills in conversing with her wouldn’t transfer to other situations. On the other hand, he was at least getting practice in adaptation. He’d managed to avoid another explosion like the first night when he’d tried to comfort her ( _About the Holocaust_! _You’d think that being a terrible ass was part of my mutation_ ) and while he was glad not to offend her, he missed the burning intensity of her broadcast fury. 

Taking another sip, he felt his companions’ attention swing around to him. He turned his head, focused on the professors. He felt their intoxication and the low-grade predation that usually preceded a round of teasing or practical jokes. The combination made him wary.

“Speaking of ladies,” Trevors drawled, “Looks like Charles here has a new girl.”

“That’s hardly news,” scoffed Willis, disappointed that Trevors had built them up for nothing. “Charles has a new girl every week.” The whole table laughed at this and Charles felt himself smiling at their good-natured teasing.

“Ah, but this is a different kind of girl,” continued Trevors, laying out the bait. “You’d never guess who.”

The other professors swallowed it eagerly, tossing out names and descriptions of various women on or near campus. With each 'no' Trevors gave, the guesses became wilder, broadening to include undergraduate students a decade Charles’s junior to the dormitory matrons. No one was correct, and by the time Trevors was waving down guesses, Charles sat with his lips pursed together, trying to have faith that the professors’ better nature would show through. He cheated a little and sent out tendrils to boost the men’s compassion.

Waiting until all attention was on him, Trevors grinned. “Charles Xavier has been to dinner three times with Erika Lehnsherr, the researcher from Physics who handed him his ass last month.”

A physical silence floated on top of a mental explosion of surprise. Then the voices followed.

“Ho, ho, Charles! Braving the dragon, eh?”

“Really, Xavier, why on earth would you bother?”

“Is she as scary as the grad students say she is?”

There were more questions and Charles bore them as well he could. He knew that if he laughed them off they’d wind down soon enough, move on to another topic.

Or McLeod would say something truly awful.

“I’m surprised, Xavier. I didn’t peg you for the perverted type.” His casual sadism made Charles itch. “Do you like her whip on your ass, or are you in it for the challenge of taming her? I suppose it’s always more personal if you break them in yourself.” The last sentence was accompanied by an image of Erika, naked and pinned to a mattress under McLeod's hands, her body limp and eyes lowered in resignation. 

Charles found himself standing and his companions silent. He was clenching his jaw and fists and clamped down  _hard_ on his powers and a bloodlust he didn’t know he had. The whole table was absolutely still. Even their minds were drowned out by Charles’ own anger. He held himself in check while glaring at the offending party.

McLeod withered under those intense eyes, feeling as though Charles could see right down to his very core. He swallowed once, twice, searching for something to say and the breath to say it. He felt very tangibly on trial.

Charles stood in the center of his rage, neither falling prey to it nor able to make it subside. The storm offered up ways to hurt McLeod, ways to fulfil Charles’s darkest desires: implant traumatic memories, put the man’s worst nightmares on a repeating loop, fuse open his pain centers, transform him to a helpless madman, blast his mind into dust. The anger fed him the impulses and the telepathy--

The telepathy let him see how to do it. In the space of a heartbeat, Charles looked into McLeod’s mind and knew a dozen different ways to take him apart at the level of selfhood. He could see all the pressure points, all the openings he could use to enter, all the connections and how to destroy or reroute them. He could obliterate this man and remake him into anything at all, and after that he could take the memory of it from everyone in the pub.

The knowledge froze his blood and the desire made him want to retch. He took a shuddering breath.

“Don’t ever think you’re better than someone because you can’t understand them,” he delivered in a voice of restrained fire. McLeod muttered something with a hint of regret and the beginnings of his shame dissipated the storm that was keeping Charles afloat. Xavier felt his whole body sag.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” The others nodded or murmured goodbyes. He barely heard them as he left.

He called a cab to get to home, stumbled in the door, collapsed into bed. He curled himself around a pillow and began to shake. It had all been too much. Keeping himself from hurting anyone or leaving evidence of his abilities had been monumental, and nothing had prepared him for the horror of wanting and knowing how to destroy a man. He was exhausted and sick to death of himself.

As he lay crying, he reached out across Oxford. It was a strain when he was this spent, but he found Erika’s comforting hum. He held the feeling close as he faded into sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Charles Francis Xavier was, as far as Erika was concerned, the most infuriating man she had ever met. It didn’t help that he was strikingly attractive and knew it, or entirely too brilliant for her peace of mind, or that she could easily spend hours at a time lost in a discussion with him that might span everything from the latest advancements in physics to their starkly different taste in classical music. No, the trouble was that he was naive and childishly eager to please, and more days than not she could hardly understand why she didn’t simply catch him by the shoulders and try to shake sense into him by physical force. Sweet reason, certainly, had been doing her very little good in that regard.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, of course, if she’d been able to maintain a sensible disdain for him and everything to do with him. That would have been quite manageable. One dinner, perhaps two, and then she could have courteously told him to leave her alone. She had fully intended to do exactly that, but so far she had taken three dinners with him and agreed to a fourth with no sign of slowing down. They’d even passed a few words over tea in one of the squares a few days ago, watching the trees showering the earth with red and gold leaves while they discovered their mutual enjoyment of chess during a conversation about the latest advances in astronomy. It was all becoming very cozy, almost comfortable, and that set her nerves on edge. Something, her instincts told her, was bound to go wrong.

The real trouble, she decided as she stepped across High Street and headed for the bridge, had started during their second dinner. She had allowed herself a little more wine than perhaps she might have under other circumstances, and she was even prepared to admit that she might have given Charles the wrong impression about the sort of liberties she might permit him to take with her that evening. It had come as a surprise - indeed, a shock - when he had rather abruptly broken off the dinner with a profuse apology and rushed out the door. She had followed him, after she recovered from her stunned disbelief, with the intent of giving him a piece of her mind for having lost his nerve or some other damned foolish thing. Instead, she’d found him a block down the road carefully holding upright a man who was obviously the worse for both drink and melancholy. It was obvious from his dress - working-class and ragged at the edges - that he could hardly have been a friend of Xavier’s, but Charles had helped him along with the determined and solicitous patience worthy of a very good friend indeed. It had been a long mile and a half walk to the man’s home, and Erika had been forced to follow at some distance so that Charles would not be aware of her watching, but there was no sign of intimacy or familiarity between them - only of concern from Charles, and alternating fits of drunken despair and anger from the man half-draped across his shoulders. Xavier had helped the man into his home and most likely into his bed, and stayed for several minutes before ducking out into the cold night air. He had been startled - quite stunned, in fact - to find Erika waiting for him with her hands tucked into the pockets of her long coat and a single question on her lips. _Why, Charles?_

He had shifted there for a moment, uncomfortable, before explaining that he had seen the man passing in the street outside the restaurant in obvious distress. Despite the fact that he was clearly expecting her to be angry with him for his abrupt departure, he did not apologize to her again. What he said instead had struck her hard, hard enough to take the air out of her lungs, and all the more so because he had said it with such open innocence - as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.  _If I didn’t help him, he might not have gotten home safely. If I hadn’t, who would have?_

She’d had no words then, and so she’d put her hand on his arm and roughly turned him back toward the heart of Oxford with a rather harsh tone that hadn’t quite concealed the wonder in her voice.  _In future, take the time to explain yourself before you decide to play the Good Samaritan. I believe we have a meal to finish, and I don’t intend to let you off so easily._

He’d gone with her, and they’d spoken no more about it since. That had not, unfortunately, done anything to help Erika avoid _thinking_ about it with distressing regularity. She had known, intellectually, that there must be men of that sort in the world - that the whole idea of ‘a decent chap’ must have some grain of truth at its heart. What she had not expected was to meet one, and to meet him wrapped in a package of such promise and childish folly that it threatened to drive her mad. It brought him into her mind almost as often as those brilliant blue eyes of his and was far harder to dismiss, with the result that when he had asked her about dinner tonight she had turned him down flatly in the hopes of winning herself a little peace of mind by way of losing herself in her work for as many hours as possible. It had not, she was forced to admit, been a terribly successful experiment. While she had certainly been productive, she had found herself thinking about his absence with a regret that nearly appalled her. It was absolutely impossible that she should have grown fond of the company of that irritating young man, and yet she had.

She resolved, on the stairs up to her flat, that something would have to be done about that. _Now, if only I had the some idea what._


	10. Chapter 10

The door of the little Italian restaurant near the bridge slammed shut before Charles really understood what was happening. They’d been talking over dessert about Erika’s Unified Field Theory experiments and what the data might mean. Charles had been genuinely impressed by the work and said so; when he followed it with an intended compliment Erika had radiated electric anger and stalked out onto the street. 

Charles murmured hurried apologies to the restaurant’s host, leaving his card. 

By the time he was standing on the sidewalk Erika was nowhere to be seen. Charles felt for her and set of jogging in the appropriate direction. He rounded the corner at the end of the block, saw her silhouette, and ran faster. 

“Erika!” He was only a few yards away now. “Erika, please wait!” 

She kept going, head ducked forward into the cold Halloween wind and her hands jammed into her pockets, and bits of her dark hair had begun to come loose from the pin holding it in place. They whipped the air behind her as if her fury was creating its own small windstorm around her, danced across the half-buttoned long coat which was billowing with the wind; together, they gave her the air of a thundercloud somehow concentrated into human form. It was a daunting picture. 

On the other hand, she wasn’t speeding up. That was something. 

Charles reached her and met her pace. She refused to look at him. “Erika, please, I honestly don’t understand what I did wrong.” His voice had a pleading undertone. “I can’t make it right if you don’t tell me.” 

She kept going, her half-visible face stark and cold with anger, and her breathing was a jagged knife in the night for a long minutes before she spoke. Her voice, savagely clipped, cut at him. “No, Charles, you probably don’t. You probably think it was positively benevolent to call me ‘a credit to my sex.’ A generous compliment about how far I’ve overcome my unfortunate birth.” The words, harsh though they were, tumbled away from him almost unheard. It was the hint of tears against her dark lashes that seized him by the throat. 

“That’s not what I meant!” His tone was almost anguished. The waves of anger carried hurt on them now that stung him with every pulse. It felt like being slapped with thorns. 

For an instant, a fraction of a second, Charles saw a bundle of Erika’s memories: all the different ways she’d been underestimated or praised like a pet. The patronizing surprise or the dismissive disbelief in those familiar old words:  _for a woman._ The tired, dirty feeling he got from it overshadowed the joy and surprise of the momentary connection. He ran his hand roughly through his hair. 

“But that’s what I said, wasn’t it. I’m tremendously sorry.”

She turned on her heel, nearly slamming into him, and her eyes blazed into his with hurt, anger and something worse, something he hadn’t seen in weeks - something close to contempt. “Oh, I’m sure you didn’t mean to offend me. Just like you don’t  _mean_ to be unthinking and cruel to all those pretty young students you ‘show a good time’ before you drop them for being too much trouble. Or is it that they get too close and start seeming too much like real people for you to keep using them, Charles, is that it? I’m obviously so much  _ better _ than those girls to you - a different sort of woman, the sort you actually pay attention to because I can measure the spin of atoms in a lab. How long will that keep your interest before you decide that I’m one more woman you can have a good tumble with, or just drop by the wayside because I’m in your way? How long, Charles?”

The words felt like a knife in his chest, the broadcast of tempestuous emotions scorching the rest of him. He sucked in a shaking breath around the pain, knowing that Erika was using her daggers as a shield. He ached for her as much as he was hurt by her. 

“You can ask  _them_ how much cruelty was involved,” he glared. “I’ll point them out if you’d like.” He brought a hand to the bridge of his nose, sighed.

“I don’t know where this is going, where we’re going.” His felt his words come from a deep place, unmoderated by his conscious mind. “I haven’t been in control of the situation since the first words you spoke to me. I can’t tell you the future because I don’t know it myself. All I know is that you compel me. That you’re one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known and certainly the strongest. That talking to you is the highlight of my week.” He reached forward and gently took her hand. “You see me more accurately than anyone but my sister. I want to tell you all my past and dreams and secrets. I want to know anything you’ll tell me about yourself.” He covered her hand with his. “You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met, man or woman. Erika, whatever you want of me is yours for as long as you want it.” 

“Charles....” Erika trailed off, staring at him in the icy moonlight, tears still clinging to her lashes as she struggled with the lashing waves of fury, confusion, pain and fear that were playing havoc with her equilibrium. She had a life - a life she’d fought for, clawed for, bled for. A life whose parameters were measured exactly to her specifications, precisely kept as any garden or scientific instrument. He had no place in that life, and any moment now she would tell him that. This maddening, beautiful, foolish young man who she knew - she  _knew_ \- was going to bring her nothing but pain. She would cut him away and go back to her life a free woman, and that was that. 

The words refused to come. She fought with them, struggled with them, and they still would not form in her mouth. It was insanity, pure lunacy, but they  _would not come._ Finally, worn out and heartsick, she heaved a long sigh and bowed her head to let the wind-loosed darkness of her hair spill across her face and conceal the aching fear there. “You are quite mad, Charles, and I do not know what to make of you. Half the time I think you must be a drunken, self-centered lout and the rest you seem to be trying to make up for all the ills of the world by some personal campaign of generosity. I have spent more hours in conversation with you this month than I can remember spending with a man in so short a time, and yet I feel I hardly understand you at all. Can this possibly be the insight you think I have?”

He smiled softly. “You know you don’t understand me. Everyone else thinks they do.” He turned, looking up at the clouds sailing across the moon. “Would you like to go back to the restaurant or somewhere else?” 

“I want to go home.” She said the words sharply, firmly, with an absolute certainty that felt like steel in his mouth. The anger had guttered away, but there was something else there now that he couldn’t recognize except in the subtle slump of her shoulders and the  fine lines of exhaustion etched into her face. 

Charles took a step back towards the center of town. “I’ll get you a cab,” he offered. 

“No.” A sharp, decisive shake of her head, and she gestured over her shoulder toward the bridge to drive the point home. “I’d rather walk. If I let someone drive me, I’ll be too restless to sleep for hours.” 

Charles was struck with the way the lamplight highlighted the contrasts of her face. Shadows unfurled across her right cheek and under her jaw, hands of night holding her close. He swallowed, suddenly shy after his rather bald declaration of devotion. “Do you mind if I see you to your door?” 

She lifted her face to him, moonlight chasing the shadows back like the fingertips of an eager rival, and her lips curved in the faintest hint of a smile. She said nothing, but when she turned on her heel and started down the street at a brisk walk he caught the sharp beckoning gesture of her right hand and knew he was invited. 

They walked in silence through pools of light, under skeleton trees, through streams of wind cold as rivers. Charles turned his collar up, stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders and was glad he could complain to himself as much as he liked. That turned out to be less than he anticipated, as Erika’s presence warmed him. 

The darker the night, the colder he got, Charles felt her strange and wonderful music all the more strongly. He began to wonder what lay in store for them at the end of the night; whether he would fade like Eurydice into a ghost. The thought lingered, grew almost tangible, blew away on an icy gust like so much ash when she turned and glanced at him with the smallest hint of a smile on her face. The moonlight caught it, cradled it, offered it up to him like a promise. Then she turned back to the road, her stride still long and quick, and he thought he heard her soft laughter on the wind. 

She could feel him in the night behind her as they walked, as though he were a hot spark of light in the darkness that the wind could not blow out. It was an image she wanted to chide herself for, silly and childish, but it lingered and the truth was that she felt too free and alive out in this sea of roads and trees and houses spread under the stars to begrudge the momentary flight of fancy. She had always loved walking at night, the sweet enfolding protection of the darkness and the hot bright energy of exertion burning in her body. She doubted that Charles had ever walked five miles in the cold dark in his life, and there was a quicksilver satisfaction in the thought that he was doing it tonight, here, and with her. 

Vanity, she chuckled silently, had always been one of her family’s faults. 

They came around the last corner onto her block with her long-legged stride still leading the way, and she was almost certain that she could hear his breathing dragging at the night air from the effort of keeping up. She buried a smile at his expense that he would not have understood, and it did not even occur to her that he now knew where she lived - something she allowed almost no-one, because the world was a safer place when there was no-one who knew where to find you. It was a thought she ought to have had, and yet it didn’t come. She walked past the edge of the block, down her street, and across the small stretch of grass to the side gate. Stopped there, fingers against the wood and the cool metal beneath, and then turned to look back at him with her hip resting on the plane of the weather-worn oak. 

“I was glad to see you home,” Charles said, a dozen other things to say jumbled in his mouth. 

“You are very kind.” It could have been ironic, but the softness in her voice robbed it of its bite. Her hair was fully loose now, the wind catching at it and dancing strands through the night air, and it gave the strange little smile on her face an almost otherworldly quality - as if some fey queen had stolen her shape somewhere in those five miles of darkness. The gate creaked softly with her weight as she leaned back against it, her left hand resting about the latch, and her right came up to catch the curve of his jaw as if it were as inevitable as the acceleration of a falling object caught by gravity. The cold leather caressed his wind-chafed skin roughly, the hesitant warmth of her hand almost imperceptible beneath it, and those eyes were almost black in the moon-splashed dark - two fathomless windows into some other world. Her breath was warm mist in the air, a slow exhalation he could feel as much as hear, and he was infinitely aware of the soft line of her lips as they pressed together. Parted. 

He felt pulled by some vast and inescapable force as he wrapped his left arm gently around her, lifted his right hand to smooth the hair from her face, and her chin tilted subtly to bring her cheek against his fingers. The cloud of her vibration enveloped and infused him. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat and he wondered if it kept rhythm with hers. She filled all his senses - the sharp spice of her subtle perfume, the quiet shiver of her breath against his face, the tiny shift of her weight as she let herself lean into his arms. He lowered his mind’s walls as he leaned forward, wanting her to feel his heart as he felt her, and the air itself seemed to crackle around them with a strange caged lightning. Both their lips were cold and it didn’t matter; the kiss burned. He lingered in it, started to draw back, and then her hand was in his hair with a grip like iron and she was returning his kiss with a fierceness that seared the ice from his bones and left him trembling.  _Like covalent bonding - as if we were sharing each other’s auras as well as each other’s air._ The thought was almost absent, and yet its sharp clarity was all hers, and it clicked into his thoughts like a turning key. Between one gasping breath and another, he  _felt_ the hot sharp tangle of her desire and her fear as they thundered under her skin and blasted all but the most distant thoughts to fine powder. Felt the way her body surged to press itself to him, and the way her hard-tempered pride and caution held her back. Felt his name written like a starburst in her head.  _Charles._

_Erika_ . His whole being sang her name in response. The crush of their bodies, so intense after so many hours spent at a careful, proper distance, was only a small part of the crescendo of their entwined energy. Charles felt himself falling, or flying, hurtling through space like a meteor, giddy and electric. 

Erika made a low, fervent sound deep in her throat that Charles swallowed, and suddenly he was experiencing the kiss from both sides, a confusing infinite reflection of sensation and desire so strong he was afraid he’d never be able to come back from it. He threw a hand out to grip the gate, stepped back slightly, disengaged from Erika with a feeling almost like pain and rested his forehead against hers. He gathered himself back up inside his walls as they panted together. In a moment, he could breathe and feel what he was and was not. 

He leaned back, one hand still on Erika’s shoulder, unable to do anything but look at the shadows and light of her face. Her eyes smoldered with intensity, and he could taste her fear and her wary caution in his mouth as they tried to push away the weight of her desire and the flickering intensity of the invisible web that still seemed to be binding them together. He half-expected them to be throwing sparks away into the night, himself. 

Her lips parted again, and he couldn’t tell if the renewed urge to kiss her was hers or his own. She whispered, instead - a soft breathless exhalation of words that still managed to sting with authority. “Good night, Charles.” 

He lowered his hand slowly from her shoulder, a soft caress. If she were anyone else he would have stroked the fear from her mind, silently whispered safety into the texture of her heart. Because she was Erika \--complicated, fierce, unpredictable and in so many ways still incomprehensible Erika\--he did not. He smiled softly instead.

“Good night, Erika.” His voice was undisguised affection as he pulled his hands into his pockets and took another step back. 

Something in the tightness of her body relaxed subtly as he moved back, the low thunder of her fear fading into something like a whisper, and she watched him for a moment in silence as the wind ran its fingers through her hair. She pushed the gate, letting it swing open, and began the short walk of a dozen steps to the door which led to the back stairs. It was almost a surprise when she stopped with her hand on the door to turn and look over her shoulder at him. 

“We will have dinner again on Thursday.” He felt the words more than heard them because the jealous wind tried to snatch them away from him, but his talent snatched them up like a few droplets of water from a stone. It was only after she watched him for another infinitely long handful of heartbeats, after she vanished into the house without another word between them, that he realized it was the first time she had offered anything to him instead of making him ask for it. 

The world burned brighter as he trudged back to civilization: the stones of the road scraping under his shoes, the wind tearing away as much of his heat as it could, the constellation of minds laid out around him. Behind him, Erika pulsed like Polaris. 

While chivalrous, Charles was not unpragmatic, and gently but firmly tugged on the mind of a cabbie heading in his direction. The man would thank his unlikely decision to drive out to this particular neighborhood after he discovered that cold, rich men could be very generous indeed. Thawing in the warmth of the car, Charles felt the events of the evening too large to think about at such a close distance. Letting the memory wash over him, drunk on what he had touched in Erika and the feelings she had evoked in him, all he knew was that something profound had changed forever. 

As they passed back out of Cowley and into Oxford, he thought for a moment he might have heard her laughter in his ears - bright and wild, the laughter of a girl more thrilled than afraid. When he tried to catch it like those last words, it was already gone. 


	11. Part Two - Covalent Bonding

**London, December 8, 1962**

The Globe Theater spilled them out into the icy December night in a gust of warm air and steaming breath, a great company of watchers still reeling from the pleading thunder of Bolt’s language and the actors who had given it voice. Erika broke loose of the crowd and started down the street at a brisk walk, her usual discomfort among a mass of people lost in the fierceness of her argument, and her hands cut and sliced the air with animated passion as she went on without slowing in word or in step. “But you must see, Charles, that if More had been willing to break with his unreturned devotion to the law and the King he could have kept his conscience _and_ done something other than make a martyr of himself.”

Charles strode beside her, breath puffing white clouds on the night air, hands clutched in the pockets of his black wool overcoat. “More wasn’t alone with his enemies. If he had broken the law, saved himself, done something more pragmatically effective, how would that affect the people around him?” Charles’s conversation was animated, lively, though he could feel his own personal stake in the matter adding slight edges to his words. “More’s subordinates would see his corruption and either persecute him for it or become corrupted themselves. Those he was responsible for, those he served, would be worse off for having as chancellor a man who would twist the law to further his goals, however noble those objectives. If you change the law for someone it can be changed again by anyone with the power to do so.” _Keep someone from their hate today and leave them more vulnerable to it tomorrow._ “He couldn’t cut down the people’s best defense and leave them.”

“Much good it did him, or them.” Her voice was fierce with a fire that seemed to burn against his skin, though it seemed to be reserved for the long dead More at the moment. Those eloquent hands came together, and then the right slice downward for emphasis. “Cromwell still took power and bent the laws to suit him, and More still died at a perjurer’s word. The laws have always been a tool for the powerful to use against the weak, Charles, and the best a good man can do is use _all_ the tools at his disposal to protect those who need protecting against the great common mass.”

“No,” Charles said, shaking his head. “A good man can do a great deal more. I...” He broke off, turning to look behind. He heard a man’s frantic terror in his mind just slightly before the car screeched around the corner, pedestrians screaming and diving out of the way, other cars scraping violently off the already dented frame. Charles knew the brakes had failed and had only a brief moment to feel terror of his own as the headlights blinded him and he grabbed for Erika.

She reached him first. Her hand caught him by the shoulders, throwing him to the side with a tightly coiled strength he hadn’t imagined she possessed, and as the pavement scraped at his shoulders and he tumbled up against the cinderblock wall of the old pub behind them he had a terrifying and perfect image of her planted on her feet in the center of those headlights, her eyes tracking back from him to the car with a snarl of rage and defiance tearing at her lips. He knew he was about to watch her die, _knew_ it with a terrible clarity, and there was something primal and beautiful about her absolute refusal to flinch from that hurtling weight of metal. Her hand came up, as if to catch the hood in her gloved palm, and his body tried to flinch. His eyes refused to move.

The car flipped up off its front wheels as though the hand of God had reached down and thrown it aside, pinwheeled in the air like a child’s toy and slammed into the plate glass storefront a dozen meters to Erika’s right with a sickening crunch and a tortured scream of metal. She was down on one knee and there was blood on her face, glass all over the street, but she was alive. She was alive.

The driver died and took Charles with him momentarily, but then the telepath was leaping up from the wall and found himself kneeling next to Erika without remembering the intervening space. He drank in the sight of her ( _alive alive alive)_ and reached himself outward at once. With one hand on Erika’s arm and two fingers at his temple, he touched mind after mind searching for witnesses. There were dozens - almost a hundred - but it was a confused tangle of adrenaline and fear and disbelief. Easy to implant new details, to make the improbable merely a mad twist of the wheel by the driver or a fluke of the impact of the wheels on the sidewalk. Erika, half-limp and trembling against him, went rigid with sudden fear as he _felt_ her mind recognize the push of his in the street as it swept across mind after mind and forced memory into a new shape, felt the weight of his power so close to her own thoughts. She pushed back from him, stumbling to her feet, and she got her back to the wall in a few unsteady steps as she watched him with impossibly wide eyes that were illuminated with her terror. _What are you_ _**doing,** Charles?_ It was so clear, so distinct, that it took him precious seconds to realize she hadn’t shouted the words aloud. Too long.

“I’m changing their memories,” he answered distantly, his mind still spread over two city blocks. “In a moment nobody but the two of us will know you moved the car.”

There was a long, taut silence as he finished his work, eyes slowly returning to focus and then widening as it sank in. _Nobody heard her speak except me. She didn’t speak._ _She didn’t speak, and I answered her. Oh, God._   In the time it took those three thoughts to cross his mind, he’d already started his turn toward the hot sparking static of her that was thick with the aftershocks of rage and adrenaline and fear. She let him get all the way around to facing her before her right hand came up and cracked him across the cheek with enough force that he tasted blood and saw sharp bursts of white light behind his eyes.

Clutching a hand to his face and running his tongue over his teeth--all thankfully still intact--Charles again felt like he was watching her about to be ripped from his life. Her incredible gift and their newly-discovered kinship was a devastatingly tantalizing glimpse of what could be. It was not just Erika as she was that he stood to loose but so much more: what she and Charles could be to each other, to Raven, to the world. It was an entire future. He was desperate to hold on to it.

“ _Please._ ” His eyes were anguished as his hand reaching out to Erika. “Can I explain? You’ll know exactly how much to slap me.”

She stood there, trembling with a violated fury that he could feel even through the strange static hiss of her thoughts, but she stayed standing there long after the moment he expected her to turn away. To storm away, really, with her whole being screaming at him to stay away from her and never speak to her again. She didn’t. She just stood, watching him with those dusky green eyes, and finally bit off a few words that were so harshly accented in German that he felt as though each one sliced his skin to the bone. “How did you know it was me who moved the car, Xavier?”

His name in her mouth was a dagger across his pulse, and it made his skin try to crawl away. He hugged his arms around himself to hold it on. “I felt you move it.” He licked his lips and took a breath. “I’m a telepath, so I can feel what you feel some of the time. Heightened emotions and physical contact increase your signals. Most of the time you’re a sort of static hum, though I can understand half a dozen of your emotions now. When we first met I couldn’t. I couldn’t read anything off you.” He stood hanging onto her silence, wordlessly pleading.

Her eyes narrowed subtly, sweeping the space around them, then refocused on his face with a dangerous intensity. “You heard my thoughts just now - when you were bending their memories. Is that the first time, Charles? If you lie to me, I swear to you...” she trailed off, and he didn’t need to read through her shields to know that he didn’t want to hear the rest of it.

“No.” Quietly. “Twice before. When you were telling me what an idiot I’d been at the Italian restaurant, I saw a few of your memories.” He took a breath. “Later that same night, when we kissed, I heard you and...fell into your perceptions.” He gripped his own arms through the sleeves of his coat. “I can’t help reading people’s surface thoughts. It’s like trying to close your ears; I can ignore them or get drunk to make them fuzzy, but they’re always there.” He paused, searching for more sins to confess. “That night in the pub, I tried to read you so I could win the argument, but I couldn’t.” He leaned forward with the force of his desperation. “I can’t promise you that it won’t happen again, but I’ll do my best to avoid it.” _Please don’t go, please please please..._ He kept the thought locked firmly in his brain.

He could feel her measuring him with her eyes, feel the weight of her well-honed fight or flight reflex clawing at the air around them like an electrical current - which, for all he knew, it might actually be. She flexed her hand slowly, as if considering slapping him again, but if her face was still closed then at least she hadn’t walked away yet. Every second of stillness was a tiny victory.

“Are you making them not see us now, or are they just spectacularly stupid?” The question took him off guard, and he realized as she spoke that the street was swarming with firemen, police officers and rubberneckers of all descriptions - not one of whom seemed to be paying any attention to the surreal side argument taking place right in front of them.

Embarrassed at forgetting their situation and then fixing it unthinkingly, Charles rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “They’re focused on other things mostly on their own. I’m encouraging it.” He looked up at her. “Maybe we should go somewhere else to talk?” He prayed that she wouldn’t take the opportunity to just leave.

“Somewhere other than the public street, you mean?” Her lips twitched with unwilling humor. “Yes, Charles, I think that might be a good idea.” Without waiting for any further agreement from him, she set off at a quick pace down the street toward their hotel and within a block had melted into the crowd so seamlessly that he had to feel for her sense to keep up.

His pulse pounded in his head and he knew that soon he’d be a limp rag after dealing with the intensity and trauma of the night.

When he arrived at the hotel she’d already gone up to their suite. He rode the elevator pacing the tight space with his hands in his pockets. The door was locked when he arrived, and his key wouldn’t turn in the lock.

“Erika?” He knocked. “Can I come in?”

It was a long three minutes before his key would turn.

He found her sitting in the small dining nook, her back to the wall, and her eyes were fixed out the window as he approached with such intent focus that it took him a moment to realize she must be searching the street for some sign of pursuit. By the time she finally did turn to look at him, he’d had enough time to begin shifting restlessly. Enough time to notice the wide array of silverware, lamps and small metal knickknacks within sight, as well, which was something he could have done without thinking about. She shot him a particularly cold and analytical stare, and a shiver crawled up his spine. Finally, she spoke. “How did you know that you were not an isolated incident, but part of a group evolutionary trend?”

He shifted his weight again and leaned against the wall. “My sister is... like us. I thought, if there were the two of us, there must be others.” His expression shifted, gently questioning. “Am I the first other mutant you’ve met?”

“Mutant.” She rolled the word across her tongue, half-disapprovingly, then gave a subtle nod. “I was not sure I even fell under the heading of your paper. I was... medicated... by madmen, after all.”

Charles suddenly wished he wasn’t in London but somewhere else, close enough to punish, torture, _destroy_ the murderers who’d hurt Erika. He settled for punching the wall, four times in hard succession, before taking a settling breath and turning back to the table. She was on her feet, the room vibrating with trembling metal, but as he settled she slowly sank back into her chair and folded white-knuckled hands. He forced out the first question he could think of, just to fill that silence. “When did your abilities manifest?”

“Warsaw. 1942.” The words were clipped, sharpened on pain and memory, and even when he waited she added nothing more. Her features and the set of her expression reminded him almost irresistibly of a wounded eagle he’d once seen as a child - too hurt to flee and too proud not to fight.

“Mine did when I was eight. Raven’s always had hers.” He thumbed a bloody knuckle, already regretting his outburst. “What else would you like to know?” Every answer in the world was on his tongue, every explanation. A thousand questions for Erika swarmed around his head but he pushed them into the back of his mind. He wanted to do everything right; _needed_ to do whatever would convince or cajole her to stay. To be someone she would still talk to in the morning.

“Everything.” Her voice was sharp and fierce, and it caught him by surprise with sufficient force to practically drag his eyes onto hers. There was a burning, brilliant light there that was something between raging curiosity and an almost possessive urgency, and for some incomprehensible reason he found himself thinking of their single kiss. She waved him into the chair across from her, fingers folding together as her hands settled against the table, and her lips pulled back from her teeth in an inquisitor’s smile. “Tell me everything, Charles, beginning with telepathy.”

In another two hours, Charles reflected, he would probably collapse when the adrenaline stopped supporting him and the weight of everything crashed down. Erika would have to deal with him as he groaned through the memory of dying in a crush of metal. In the morning his mental defenses would be raw and out of tune. The day would be filled with mundane details of travel and home and work.

But that was all later. Right now, Erika wanted to talk to him. Right now, Charles soared on the joy of telling his secret. Right now, neither he nor Erika were alone.

He resolved to keep it that way as long as possible. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Sex; mentions of maiming and torture; implied past nonconsent.

The trees on the university grounds were beautiful in the afternoon light, all reds and golds on a backdrop of pure blue sky. Charles smiled to himself and inhaled deeply, marveling at how wonderful everything felt. His research was going particularly well; he’d be presenting his latest findings at the Genetics Conference in Paris next month. He couldn’t wait.

A shower of crimson leaves surrounded him as he walked past the physics building. _Join me on the walk home, love? It’s beautiful and crisp, just the way you like it._ He caught a leaf, pressing it into the journal he was carrying. He sent the image along with the invitation.

He could feel Erika’s smile. _Sorry, Charles, I have to finish the readings before I leave. I’ll see you at dinner._ They twined themselves briefly together in a mental embrace.

Charles continued walking down the street. The little town was in good spirits at the beginning of another school year; students walked together talking animatedly, laughter poured out of the pub as he passed, and the vendors and shopkeepers smiled to everyone.

Soon he arrived at St. Barny’s. The bell rang just as he reached the corner, and children streamed out under the watchful eye of the Sisters. A dozen or so women who’d been waiting by the steps collected small children while the older boys and girls began skipping, pushing, racing, and laughing their way home. Charles stood at the other side of the door.

 _Sarah? Michael? Should I come in to get you?_ Like all children, his own tended to dawdle.

 _No, Dad, we’re here._ His daughter’s voice rang clearly in his head just before she emerged from the building, her younger brother in tow. Charles grinned at the pair, both dark-haired like their mother. He hugged Sarah and ruffled Michael’s hair.

“How was school?”

“We learned about worms today!” Michael beamed. He was eight and consequently loved anything wiggly, crawly or slimy. Charles felt his wonder and delight in bold, bright colors. “And Johnny let me play with his Matchbox cars!”

 _Was I ever that immature?_   Sarah asked with a quirk of eyebrow.

“You were worse,” Charles replied. “And it’s rude not to include everyone in the conversation.”

“That’s what you _say_ , but I know you and Mum talk over us all the time,” Sarah pouted back.

“That’s different,” Charles began. Luckily he was spared that particular parenting discussion when they began up the path to their house and Sarah’s sulk evaporated into delight.

“Auntie Raven’s here!” Charles laughed as both children dashed forward.

_Incoming, Raven._

_She’s getting stronger, isn’t she?_ his sister replied.

 _Every day._ Charles caught up to see Sarah and Michael clamped onto Raven in the living room. Everyone was smiling.

***

“Pass the salt, please, Sarah,” Raven requested. She, the children, Erika and Charles were seated around the big oak table. An excellent dinner was laid out.

“Oh, let me! Please, Mum?” Michael turned a pleading stare at his mother from across the table. Charles chuckled. Erika was less susceptible to the puppy-dog eyes than he was, but the kids could still get to her. Her lips quirked upwards in her almost-smile.

“Remember, Michael, how important it is that nobody outside the family sees you,” she said sternly. Michael nodded fervently. “Yes, Mum. I won’t show anybody else.” He darted a glance at the salt shaker, practically quivering with want.

Erika nodded once, curtly. Michael’s face broke into a huge smile. “Thanks Mum!”

The boy’s eyebrows lowered in concentration, his tongue poking out of one corner of his mouth as he held a hand out towards the stainless steel salt shaker. The table was silent. A moment more, and the salt shaker rose slowly off the table, wobbling slightly. Michael took a deep breath and moved his hand towards Raven, the salt shaker following. When it came within easy reach, Raven plucked it out of the air and smiled at her nephew. “Thank you, Michael.” Charles smiled as his son’s triumph and pride washed against him. He could tell that Sarah felt it to a lesser extent and felt left out. Charles winked at her, and she broke into a smile of her own.

 ***

In the dark of the bedroom Erika tangled a hand in Charles’ hair and another in his shirt near the small of his back, kissing him fiercely. He returned the kiss with equal fervor, pulling at her blouse, fumbling with the buttons of her waistcoat. They found themselves against the bed, Charles toppling backwards onto the mattress. Erika pinned him with her gaze as she removed her waistcoat and stepped out of her skirt, now wearing only the rumpled white blouse whose unbuttoned collar drew Charles’ eyes.

“Well?” She gestured to Charles’ shirt and trousers before crossing her arms in front of her. Her nipples made hard points under the pale fabric. Charles’ breath hitched, and under her firey stare he pulled off his sweater vest and unbuttoned his shirt to feel the cool night air against his stomach and chest. Erika’s eyes followed the movements of his hands and it seemed like he could feel the heat of her gaze rake down his skin.

At some point he had lost the rest of his clothing, and then Erika was over him, pale legs gripping his hips, the edges of her blouse tickling his stomach. Her mouth was hot over the pulse of his throat, her clever fingers raking down his chest. He tangled a hand in her hair and moaned.

It was like a switch flipping and the moment was reflected, the experiences of each one falling into the other’s. He felt her hands on him and his own skin through her hands. She tasted him as she inhaled her own scent through his breath. Each felt the other’s desire and felt it magnified, multiplied through the commingling. Heartbeats pulsed in sync. Hands on skin were magnificently confusing.

Charles felt her feel him arch his back as she ferociously engulfed him, biting down on his shoulder. He fell up into her. Their lips were crushed together and they swallowed each other’s cries as the universe blew apart.

The pulse of the explosion slowed and cooled. It left them tangled in each other’s arms and senses, needing long moments to pull themselves together, rediscover boundaries of thought and skin. Utterly spent, Charles pressed a kiss to Erika’s mussed hair, murmuring to her as he drifted to sleep.

“Good night, my beautiful, amazing wife.”

* * *

 Charles woke to the silence of a December morning and the ache of protesting muscles in his back, winter sunlight streaming through the window and the feel of the couch cushions against his shoulders. The soft warmth of Erika’s hair across his arm, where she’d fallen asleep last night after they’d spoken into the small hours. He had been sure he was going to wake her and help her to her bedroom before finding his own, but somehow sleep had stolen over him before he’d been quite able to bring himself to stir her. He had managed to drape her jacket over her - he was almost certain of that.

She was awake, now, and watching him. He could feel the cool fire of her eyes against the side of his face, and the strange electric crackle of her presence leaking across her skin. The half-audible hiss and purr of her thoughts, and the deeper hum of her emotions that he could feel through his arm like vibrations - like the feel of a piano being played which he somehow couldn’t hear. His shirt, where her cheek touched it, was damp. Her breath caught on the silence, and without being told he knew he had been dreaming very loudly indeed.

Loud enough to be heard.

“Um.” He ruffled a hand through his hair. Stared at the wall in the kitchenette. “Sorry about that. That hasn’t happened for a while; I didn’t think to....”

Her fingers touched his mouth, silenced him, and when he looked down at her in surprise her eyes were very dark and her expression unreadable. They sat like that for a while, quiet and still, holding each other’s gazes. Finally, she breathed out against his arm in a murmur that was so harshly accented he had to strain to catch it all. “It was a beautiful dream. Impossible and beautiful.”

Charles reached up to clasp her hand in his, brought it down to the cushions. He smiled. “It doesn’t have to be impossible, Erika.” His voice was warm, soft. “Beautiful things can and do happen.”

Her laughter bit into the air, a shadow in the sunlight, and she lifted her other hand to his face in a touch that was terribly gentle - as one might touch a child who simply didn’t understand that their beloved pet was never going to wake up. “Not to me, Charles. Not those things.”

He frowned slightly, inhaled to comment on her constantly gloomy attitude. Before the words could leave his lips, his brain caught up, put together the details of her gesture and words and tone. The conclusion was hard and sharp, tearing into his mind.

_‘Impossible .’_

His whisper was strangled. “They took it from you.”

“Of course.” Her lips curved into a smile of such weary bitterness that it seemed to take all the life out of her face, and when she went on it was in a voice that was flat and leached of emotion, as though in a dull recitation of facts. “It would be impossible for the people to tolerate any of the _untermensch_ breeding and contaminating good German blood with theirs. Especially when someone might ask after the blond and blue-eyed babies in the camps.”

A second passed before the pieces clicked together in Charles’ mind, and then howling rage exploded in the room. He lurched to his feet, animated and utterly consumed by the maelstrom, becoming the rage itself. As if from a long distance away he felt everyone on their block flattened by the psychic wave, and he didn’t care. He envisioned himself in a Nazi’s cell in Nuremburg. He twisted the man’s pain centers with a white-hot vengeance, felt grim satisfaction as the man thrashed. He handed the man a scalpel, let him fight a losing battle for control of his arm, drank the fear in his eyes as the blade lurched closer to him in inches. He’d start by giving the Nazi a simple compulsion to cut himself, never enough to disable or kill. Restless sleep of nothing but nightmares would be a good counterpoint. Later--much, much later--he could visit the man again and--

Hot, stinging pain exploded across his left cheek, then his right, then his left again - precise, harsh slaps that dragged him gasping out of the fantasy and into the world. Erika held him against the wall with the weight of her body, her right hand drawn back to slap him again if she had to, and he could see the echo of pain and rage fading from her eyes as the weight of his mind washed away from her half-shielded mind like burning water from an iron deck. The moan of wretched relief that rolled over him from every mind within half a kilometer was like a riptide that threatened to drag him under - she saw his eyes start to glaze again and shook him, hard, her voice low and fierce. “Get hold of yourself, Charles. Now.”

He drew a shuddering breath, pulled his defenses up as high as he could, sank to the floor and pitched to rest on hands and knees. The rage ebbed away and he was left with pain, his own and that of the two hundred and seven human beings who’d been caught in his outburst.

“Oh, god, what have I done,” he moaned into the carpet. He drew three more slow breaths to steady himself. For the second time in twenty-four hours, he worked outward from himself, touching all the minds he found. It was harder work this time--he had to shield himself and simultaneously soothe the pain and alter the memories of all the people he encountered. He slumped against the wall, the fingers of both hands pressed to his temples, eyes closed. Sweat stood out on his face and he began to breathe faster. By the time he had finished with the strangers he felt a little sick.

His bedraggled eyes looked up at Erika. “Would you like me to do anything for you?” he asked, quietly. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“I think, perhaps, that I am the one who has hurt you.” She looked at him, and a strange half-smile caught at her mouth as she took a handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wiped the sweat from his forehead with more tenderness than she had ever shown him before. “The world can be a terrible and ugly place, Charles. I hope you will remember that, so you are ready when they come for us.”

He shook his head slightly and breathed deep, closed his eyes. He felt raw from the inside out. The knowledge of what Erika had lost and endured--and the premonition of more pain he would later discover--ached in his chest, and his abilities felt stretched to their limits. Exhaling, he looked at Erika again, memorized the way the morning light threw her dark curls and pale skin into contrast.

“We’re stronger than they are.” He leaned forward, cupped a gentle hand to the softness of Erika’s cheek. “We’ll add more peace and beauty to the world than they can take away.”

“Beautiful, foolish dreamer.” The words were almost a sigh, but she didn’t pull away from him. “Be quiet before you give me another reason to bruise your lovely cheeks.”

Erika’s words lifted his heart and he smiled through his weariness. When he leaned forward and she let him kiss her, the world felt, indeed, more beautiful than before. Her laughter filled his head, soft and soul-weary, but the kiss remained for a long time like the promise of something being born.

They stayed there, on the floor, for a long time.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Sex, non-con voyeurism, infidelity

It was two days and two hours before Christmas, and the streets of Oxford were swarming with people. Erika Lehnsherr had never found much use for the holiday, and December nearly always blackened her mood into something sulfurous and biting, but if someone had pulled together the nerve to ask her how she felt on December 22nd at ten o’clock sharp she would, perhaps, have confessed that she might well have fallen victim to the “holiday spirit” about which Samuel Weston could ramble so interminably. Certainly there had been spirits involved - an entire bottle of a very fine red wine, to be exact - but she was hardly a ready drunk. The truth was that Charles was far more responsible for her present state of giddy, urgent intoxication than anything she’d had to drink. He was, of course, entirely wrong about the modern nonsense Picasso had been spreading about the art world - she still needed to correct him about that. She was fairly certain he’d see reason eventually, if she could only break off kissing that lovely mouth of his long enough to make her points properly.

Thus far, she wasn’t making much progress. Because of his gift, the bastard could keep arguing even while she was kissing the breath out of him.

“I’ll grant you--” _the images are a sort of jumble_ “but--oh, you’re beautiful when you argue--it’s--” _a jumble that makes sense. He sees the world_ “--from so many angles, from multiple pers--” _perspectives and then shows them to the viewer_ “--all at once. Ah--mmm,” _yes, do_ **_that._** _When I look at the same thing through different minds it’s a little like that._

“Picasso is like telepathy.” She breathed the words against his lips, and he could taste her laughter in his head as her fingers tangled together in his lapels and they landed with a soft thump against his front door. _In that case both of you are mad._

Charles fumbled his keys out of his coat pocket, a task made more difficult by his and Erika’s unwillingness to stop kissing each other for longer than a breath. He scraped them against the door once or twice, utterly missing the lock. He made for a third pass when Erika made a sound of laughing frustration in her throat and put her hand on the knob. The door clicked open like an obedient pet.

 _Damn, should have thought of that before._ He drew her into the front hallway, absently closing the door and flicking on the light. “I’ll remember that next time I forget my keys in the lab.” He leaned in to kiss her again, his heart beating faster as her lovely, precise fingers relieved him of his coat. He let it fall to the floor. She dropped her hat onto his coat rack, pressed him back against the rail of his stairs and dug her fingers into his jacket as her mouth parted against his.

“See if I help you again, Charles.” She breathed the words into his mouth, and with a determined mental shove she pushed the image of watching him looking hopelessly at the door while she abandoned him to his fate through the noise between her thoughts and his. Even tangled this close together, the buzz hadn’t quite entirely faded, but now it was like static on a telephone line - not enough to keep them from being heard if they spoke clearly. They were both drunk enough that ‘speaking’ loudly was natural enough to go unnoticed.

Charles laughed. “You make me look like a sad puppy.” He pulled away, made his expression as wide-eyed and forlorn as possible. “Could you abandon this face? Really?” He stepped onto the stairs, one hand on the banister and another on Erika’s elbow, unable to contain his amusement. As his eyes swept the living room, he froze. His face was a picture of embarrassment and confusion, and Erika’s back began to stiffen even before the thought from the living room couch caught up with him.

 _She’s a little older than your usual tastes, Charles._ Raven’s mental annoyance was matched by the tone of her voice. “Surprise.”

Erika’s cheeks flushed, a humiliated fury boiling through the room at that young female voice, and she looked up at Charles with molten eyes that set his skin tingling with electric crackles and sent the old grandfather clock against the bottom of the staircase oscillating wildly out of time. _If this is one of your little flings you forgot to send home, Charles, if you’ve been carrying on with them without telling me....._

He shook his head once, sighing and looking more frustrated than unsettled. “Erika, meet my sister, Raven, who apparently decided to give me a surprise Christmas visit.” He smiled at her exasperatedly. _I do wish you’d called ahead, love, but I’m happy to see you._

“Raven, this is Erika Lehnsherr, a researcher in physics...”

“Who hates surprises, but may make an exception in this case.” Erika’s voice was still slightly taut as she turned and rested her hand on the end of the banister, but she offered Raven as friendly a smile as she could manage none the less. She was going to murder Charles later, but that could wait until the girl on the couch wouldn’t be a witness. “Welcome to Oxford, Miss Xavier.”

Raven smiled back at the fierce woman, trying to be righteously annoyed and failing. There was just something compelling about Miss Lehnsherr. “Thanks.” It was much more genuine than she expected, especially since Charles was _her_ brother and _her_ friend, _she_ knew his secret, and if there was welcoming in order it should rightfully have been Raven’s prerogative.

There was a pause in the conversation, and both women looked calmly--but expectantly--at Charles.

He swallowed. “Ladies, can I get you anything?” He hoped “anything” involved the metal spirits cabinet in the kitchen.

Erika caught his eyes wandering, guessed what he was thinking quite neatly, and folded her arms across her chest in obvious disapproval. “You are going to sit down, and we are both going to sober up. It is possible that I may even be moved to make tea. In the meanwhile, you may ask your sister if her trip to England was pleasant.”

Charles sighed again, resigned. He came to the sofa and, to Raven’s continuing surprise, sat. She was torn between outrage and admiration for her brother’s latest girlfriend. Looking at Charles while they talked about her journey, Raven realized that she couldn’t remember the last time someone had successfully dissuaded him from drinking.

There was a lull after the mundane details of classes, travel and Raven’s forthcoming degree had been discussed, and then Erika rose to her feet with a firm announcement that she was going to see about a proper pot of tea and something resembling food for Raven if Charles’s kitchen was not _completely_ useless. She walked out with a final warning glance at Charles that suggested he had better behave himself, and when she vanished around the corner of the hallway he leaned forward with his head in his hands. He groaned. “Tea. She’s making _tea_. God, she’s going to kill me.”

Raven failed to hide a smile. “I like this woman more and more.”

He shot her a petulant glare. “I suppose sadism is to be expected from one’s siblings.” _This situation is not_ _my fault._

“It isn’t sadism if you deserve it, Charles.” Erika walked past him and set a plate with a modest beef sandwich and a small tray of fruit in front of Raven, giving it a critical glance before offering the girl a subtle shrug of apology. “There’s scarcely enough food in your pantry for a mouse, you know. You’ll have to go to the grocer’s tomorrow.”

Charles nodded, unwilling to fight a losing battle over groceries. “Thank you for the tea, Erika.” He was once again approaching a zen state. The mantra for this one, he thought, was Charles Must Suffer. His instinct was to apologise but he had the sinking feeling that there were more artillery strikes coming. _May as well wait until the smoke clears._

“You can thank me when it’s finished, Charles.” She vanished back into the kitchen at the first piping hiss of the kettle, pausing in the hallway to shrug out of and hang up her coat - leaving his, he noticed glumly, lying lonely on the floor - and he could hear the click and clang of his cupboards being raided for cups and saucers. She did not, he thought, sound appeased.

Raven chewed her sandwich and watched the exchange with amusement and a fair bit of confusion. It was _really_ satisfying to see someone deflate Charles’ ego so expertly, but it used to be that only Raven herself could even get close. The implications clicked together in Raven’s mind. She gave Charles a penetrating look. “You aren’t charming her.”

Charles threw up his hands. “Yes, I know, all right? I’m a little off balance this evening.”

Raven shook her head.  _I mean you aren’t charming her and you aren’t even trying. She’s the one you can’t read, isn’t she?_ The one who Raven had assumed, and Charles had allowed her to believe, was male. Raven’s anger began to bubble up.

Charles went to hang up his own coat, if only for something do. _Yes. The more time I spend with her the easier it gets, but her mind is different._ He sent Raven a brief sense of static and vibration. His control must have slipped and let some of his emotions out, though, because all at once he felt Raven’s mental doors slam closed.

“You’re serious about her.” It wasn’t precisely a question but there was still surprise in her voice. “Charles, how long have you been seeing her?”

Charles darted wary eyes to the kitchen, but there was no forthcoming confirmation or denial of the status of his and Erika’s relationship. “About two and a half months,” he said, knowing even without reading Raven what was coming next.

“Two and a half--? Charles, why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was strangled, caught in her throat around a sob, and her skin flickered blue around the edges. “I thought you trusted me.”

The words stung Charles like one of Erika’s more vigorous slaps, and Raven’s slipping control told him just how upset she was. “I’m sorry, Raven, I’m so so sorry.” He took her hand. “At first I thought we’d go our separate ways after she helped me with my problem. Then it seemed tenuous, like the next time I’d make an ass of myself would make her stop speaking to me.” He raked a hand through his hair, which at this point was thoroughly mussed. “I guess I was afraid I’d jinx it if I told anyone. Stupid, I know.” He squeezed Raven’s hand. “And two weeks ago I was going to tell you but never got through.” He swallowed, looking quietly desperate. “Can you forgive me, my friend?”

Raven looked down at their hands and then up again at Charles.

“You know, Charles, no matter how prettily you bat your eyes, two months is still a long time.” The pot clicked softly against the table as Erika set it down, startling both of them, and she took the time to empty her hands of cups before giving Raven a dry half-smile that was - for all its mocking humor - oddly comforting. “He really is an idiot, you know. I don’t know how you stood growing up with him; I would have wrung his neck. I may still, in point of fact.”

Charles frowned into his teacup but said nothing. Raven smiled through the unshed tears in her eyes. “Mostly I arranged unpleasant surprises for him,” she explained to Erika, chuckling at some memory. “And to be fair he put up with my moods and helped me get out of trouble.” _In the beginning, very big trouble._ She turned an exasperated, loving glance at Charles. “We have more in common with each other than with anyone else. And, yes, the eyes.” She looked at Erika as if to say, _What can you do?_

She took a moment to compose herself and enjoy another bite of sandwich, chewed thoughtfully, then faced the other Xavier. “Promise me you won’t keep important things from me again, Charles.”

Charles set his jaw, darting glances between Erika and Raven. “I will, Raven, but before that I--we--have something else to tell you.”

Raven allowed her next thought to reach him. _Oh god, she’s not pregnant, is she, Charles?_

 _No._ To Raven’s surprise his thought was tense, pained.

Erika’s static immediately changed to signal. _You’re asking me to do this, Charles - to trust her with my life? A girl I’ve never met before, who has every reason to want me to vanish from yours?_ Erika’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Charles, hard emeralds shot through with imperfections, and her thoughts were very clear and distinct as she forced them toward him. _Tonight of all nights, you’re asking this of me?_

 _I trust you with her life._ He sent her his rock-solid belief in both Erika and Raven. _I’d like her to know you, but I won’t push. It doesn’t have to be tonight._

Raven watched as the two stared each other down. She’d seen many couples have conversations of glances before and was going to happily tune them out until Charles gave her his promise. Then she stopped, the remains of her sandwich halfway to her mouth. The couple ignored her as she stood angrily.

Charles and Erika’s silent conversation ended when Raven gave her brother a face full of roast beef. “You told her! You told her and you’re _thinking_ at her and you didn’t even tell me! Goddammit, Charles, we decided not to tell anyone when I moved in! You didn’t even tell Elizabeth when you were engaged!” She jabbed a hand in Erika’s direction. “What makes _her_ special?!” Raven stomped to the stairs, crying. “I’m getting my bags and leaving tonight and mailing you a fucking lump of coal.”

As she mounted the first step something whipped past her head and nearly touched her. Pulled back at the last second, dangling in front of her like the carrot in front of a donkey. Hung there, turning slowly, still steaming.

She could see her own face in the tea kettle’s smooth iron burnish.

“Raven.” Erika’s voice was touched with just the faintest hint of abstraction, as though she were holding something at arm’s length and focusing on it very carefully, but it still carried a crisp authority to it. “Please come back and sit down. I’m afraid Charles has made a bit of a mess of things, but we can at least try to do this properly.”

Raven stared at the kettle. Blinked. She drifted back to the sofa looking dazed. “You’re like us.” Awe overwhelmed her, shoving her jealousy and anger to the back of her mind. “Charles always said there were more, but I never thought I’d meet someone else.” She went to embrace Erika, stopped as the other woman seemed to pull back, and settled for taking her hand. “That’s what you do?” She gestured at the kettle. “You can move things with your mind?”

“Metal.” Erika’s smile was faint but real, and the kettle settled itself back on the table as she slowly cupped the younger woman’s hand in both of hers. “As best I understand it, I control and manipulate magnetic fields. It has... certain helpful applications. Charles has explained his telepathy, but he did refrain from telling me what your mutation is - he only said that you were like the two of us. In, I suspect, what was probably a fit of panic. Under the circumstances, you probably ought to let him off with a severe slapping and the lump of coal.”

Charles slid Erika a rueful glance and brought a hand to his cheek.

“Oh, Raven.” He looked more sincere than she had seen him in a long time. “It’s important to me that we all know about each other; I’m terribly sorry it happened like this. I’m sorry for how it’s hurt both of you.”

Raven crossed her arms and looked at her brother sternly. “Is that everything, Charles? Nothing else I should know?”

“No, that’s everything.” _Thank God._

Raven’s voice was exacting. “So promise.”

Charles looked up at his sister as he took her hands in his, and again Erika found herself believing the beautiful, impossible things he said. “I promise I will do everything in my power to make sure you know important information and to discuss with you before telling anyone else about us.”

He and Raven looked at each other for a long moment. Then Raven’s face softened, and they leaned forward into a hug. “In that case, idiot brother mine, I forgive you.”

Erika turned away, her throat choked with the silent threat of tears, her whole body trembling with an echo of bitter, jealous pain. _Family. I would have burned the world for mine, if only I could have. Too late. Years too late._

Charles felt the turmoil of her emotions buzz through the air. He sought out her eyes over Raven’s shoulder. _You can have mine,_ he thought privately. As he and Raven eased out of their hug, he shifted to make room for Erika on the sofa, holding out his hand in an offering. She hesitated a moment, hands uncertain at her sides, then slowly crossed the room to take his hand and settle next to him. Only the slightest hint of tears sparkled in her eyes, quickly blinked away, and her voice could have passed for normal to anyone else. Charles heard the roughness in it. “You are very lucky that your sister and I put up with you.”

He looked at Erika like she was something precious he couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to hold. “I am _incredibly_ lucky.” He sat looking at her in wonder and holding her hand for a moment.

Raven poked him in the ribs. Charles lost the gravity of the moment and grinned. “I couldn’t think of two better women to get slapped by.”

Erika’s soft, wry laugh rolled over the room like the whisper of a distant ocean. “I still haven’t heard from either of you what Raven can do, and I must admit that the question is somewhat prominent in my mind.” Both she and Charles turned to look at Raven, Erika curious and Charles encouraging.

Raven looked between the both of them, gave a short laugh, and stood. “I can do this.” On the last word, there was a cascading flicker of blue and suddenly President Kennedy was smiling at Charles and Erika. “Good evening, Miss Lehnsherr, Professor Xavier.” He nodded to each.

Erika sat, astonished, and before she could say something the President’s square good looks rippled into the generous curves of Ella Fitzgerald, who winked at them in her evening gown. She smiled at Erika. “Any requests?”

Those dark green-brown eyes swept over her slowly, intent and inquiring, and then Erika asked the question Raven wouldn’t have expected in a century. “What do you actually look like?”

Ella snapped back into the Raven that Erika had first seen, blonde and slim with blue eyes, a sweet face and long legs. Even in her jeans and sweater she felt more naked than she had in a long time. “How do you know this isn’t it?”

“Women’s intuition.” Erika’s lips twitched subtly, her eyes keen. “There’s a subtle visual distortion when you shift, like a ripple, and nothing on you right now could be making it. If it were a light construct, I’d feel the change in the air - you’re physically changing shape. So I’m curious if you actually have a natural shape, or if you’ve always been shifted in one way or another.”

Raven was impressed, and judging by the mingled look of admiration and attraction on Charles’ face, so was he. _Maybe you aren’t such an odd couple._ Charles was too wrapped up to either hear her or care. Raven could still feel Erika’s eyes on her.

Swallowing, Raven crossed her arms. On her next exhalation she relaxed her power, held out her blue, scaled hands in display, looked squarely at Erika with her yellow eyes, unnerved but also unwilling to hide.

Erika’s soft, breathless gasp hung in the air for a moment, just long enough for the first flinch of pain to start, and then her voice spilled out of her in a single word that hummed with delight and wonder. “Exquisite.”

Raven’s shame was replaced by confusion and the barest thread of hope. “You really think so?” A knot in her stomach that she hadn’t been aware of having began to loosen. Under Erika’s appreciative stare another feeling began, a warmth curling through her that she never would have expected to feel under the gaze of a woman and certainly not while she was blue and scaly. She didn’t even notice her brother’s eyes widen.

Charles stood abruptly, coughing and making a very direct line towards front hall. “Excuse me, ladies. I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

“All right, Charles...” Erika’s answer was thoroughly absent, her eyes still slowly working over each scale and tight line of Raven’s face and hands - everything she could see. She was in the middle of wondering about what she _couldn’t_ see when the blush started on her cheeks. “Excuse me, Raven. I’m staring, aren’t I?”

“You can stare if you want to.” Raven felt shy and bold all at once. “Nobody’s ever looked at me like...” She sat down again, not quite an arm’s length between the two women. “Charles is the only one who isn’t afraid of me like this, and he thinks what I can do is amazing, but he doesn’t think it’s pretty.” She looked at her hands, then back up at Erika. “So you can stare if you want.”

“I do. Very much.” Erika’s voice hitched on what she resolutely declared to herself was mere aesthetic appreciation. It wouldn’t have done to feel anything else - not under the circumstances. “You are unique, Raven, and unspeakably beautiful. I...” she trailed off again, not sure how to justify _I want to see you without the stupid artifice of those clothes_ , even to herself.

Raven felt heat in her cheeks, wondered what Erika thought of the darker blue. She was awash in emotions. In her head the echo of fear faded under the euphoria of discovery, which was quickly giving way to a desire she hadn’t expected in a situation she hadn’t thought was possible. She felt guilty for wanting the woman Charles so clearly loved. She didn’t want to hurt him, and she did. And she wanted this moment, this nascent heat between her and Erika, for itself. She wanted to stay close and learn Erika’s control and force of personality. She wanted Erika, wanted to touch the steel and electricity she had felt even from across the room.

Raven peeled off her sweater, pushed the sleeves of her t-shirt up past her elbows, and extended her bare, azure forearms, one palm up, the other palm down. She glanced up at the physicist, searching for reciprocated want in the other woman’s face, and found a fire there that could have seared the cloth from her skin and danced over every inch of her without harming a scale. Her cheeks might be flushed with a hint of dull, reflexive shame at her own desire, but there was no way even a child could have missed the evidence of that hunger in Erika Lehnsherr’s face.

Raven’s breath hitched as she felt Erika’s desire as a palpable force in the room, even without her brother’s talent.  _Oh,_ **_that’s_** _why Charles left..._ She shook her head. He already knew, and had likely already heard whatever fantasies were bubbling up in the minds of the two women. The fire in Erika’s eyes made Raven decide she didn’t care. She moved closer and guided one of Erika’s hands to the scales on her forearm.

Erika’s breath caught again, and she closed her eyes on a rush of desire. Thirty years of reflex and training were telling her that this was _not_ a good idea... and it scarcely made a dent in the bright hot storm dancing under her fingertips where they touched the faintly roughened hardness of those scales. Stroked, slowly, as though to drink in the texture.

She opened her eyes, and her voice was a crackling whisper of hunger. “You are a captivating creature, Raven.”

Erika’s hands on her skin--her real skin--was scrambling her brain in the most wonderful way possible. The room seemed to fade away into a wash of muted colors, a backdrop for Erika’s blazing intensity. Raven began to understand why some of her friends liked sex so much. It was completely different when she was in her own skin.

She took Erika’s other hand and slid it to rest on her waist under her shirt. Erika’s breath caught, hard, and then she swore under her breath. “To hell with it. We’re not human, so why should we care what their rules say?” The words rode a wild, breathless little laugh out of her, and then she leaned forward and kissed Raven’s lips fiercely. Pressed her back against the couch. Breathed her in, opened those dark green eyes, and breathed heat into her mouth. “Do you want this, Raven?”

She could still feel Erika on her lips. In answer, she shucked her t-shirt off in one smooth motion, discarded it, and trailed a finger down Erika’s neck, for the first time enjoying the contrast of cobalt on cream. “I want this.”

Erika’s eyes gleamed, and she ran her hands slowly over the long patterns of scale and skin that covered Raven’s shoulders. Her back. Her torso. The sigh of pleasure caught on Erika’s teeth. “Perhaps there is a room somewhere more comfortable than the parlor we could... retire to.”

Raven couldn’t help giggling as she stood and led Erika to the guest room containing Raven’s luggage. “Retire? Who says that any more?” Her laughter was abruptly cut off as Erika pressed them both to the closed door. Raven felt Erika’s intense heat against her from chest to knees and melted under it, hands twining in Erika’s hair and clothes, little noises of pleasure and desire escaping her throat. Heat and hunger pooled between her legs. Erika lifted her, half-carried her to the bed, and then that searing laugh danced against Raven’s throat as those deft, strong, slender fingers began baring every inch of that alien blue skin.

They both forgot unimportant matters like talking, after that.

***

Charles had walked briskly through the frigid night air as a man pursued, trying to outrun whatever was happening between Raven and Erika. He should have taken the car. He’d barely made it past the first bend in the road when he was struck by a wave of intense arousal. He stumbled on for another step or two, reeling as he tried and failed to shut out Raven’s mind. Standing with shoulders hunched as he puffed out clouds of breath like a steam engine, he closed his eyes and tried again. Tried to picture a serene lake, or focus on the stars, or how bloody cold he was. None of it worked. He could still see Erika’s firey, hungry stare, watching as her eyes flashed a most beautiful, intense dark green as she ran her hand across Raven’s skin. There was some relief of tension as Raven laughed, but before he could try again to block her out, Erika pulled off all of Raven’s remaining clothes and began touching her.

All over.

Raven’s desire and lust and joy were surging through Charles, and he could feel his own body responding even as most of him wished he could be anywhere else, with any other gift or no gift at all.

There was nothing to be done about it. Charles turned around, walked unsteadily back towards his house, fumbled into his garage and car. Locking both doors (not that that would stop her) he closed his eyes, his head resting against the frozen glass of the window. He felt the physicist’s hot, wet mouth against the curve of Raven’s stomach like it was his own. A stifled moan escaped his lips. “Erika.” It was wonderful and agonizing to see her and not see her, feel her touch on someone else’s skin, feel Raven’s mind so clearly and only the barest vibration of Erika’s. He was incredibly aroused, embarrassingly interested in the encounter, and it _hurt_ that Erika had known Raven for all of two hours before bringing her to bed.

He was a little angry with his sister--he moaned again as she did--and okay so maybe after tonight he should stop thinking of her as his sister to save himself a little sanity. He couldn’t be very angry with Raven, though, since he’d never felt such joy and happiness radiating from her before. He hadn’t recognized the depth of its absence until she was bathed in it, and how could he have not realized how important it was to her to feel beautiful? So he was hurt that Raven would do this but not as mad as he’d liked to have been.

All thought ended as Erika lowered her head between Raven’s legs to taste her. Charles almost ripped his trousers open in his haste to grant himself release and was amazed--mind-blowingly, sexily amazed--at experiencing two different sets of anatomy. If anything, Raven’s sensations were more intense than his own, moving all through her body and dancing on her skin.

While everything else in Raven’s mind was blurred into insignificance, Erika’s touch and presence were as clearly defined, solid, real as they ever were. She looked up into Raven’s eyes and the smoldering intensity that wasn’t meant for him struck Charles to the core. He clamped his free hand over his face, willing the situation to end or to overwhelm his body enough that he couldn’t feel heartache.

He gasped again as Erika slid two fingers into Raven. The shapeshifter rocked her hips while Charles worked his fist in the same rhythm. He fell over the edge first and when Raven climaxed he almost felt like he was dissolving; nothing existed but sensation.

When he felt coherence creeping back, Charles tried to avoid it. As he cleaned up his mess he focused only on his immediate surroundings. He left the garage and stepped out into the cold again, let it wash some of the tangles out of his mind and leech the sweat off his body. He stood on the road looking at the stars, wondering if everything always had to be so damn complicated.


	14. Chapter 14

“Charles, are you going to come inside, or are you going to stand out here all night?”

There was something raw and alive in Erika’s voice that stole the air out of Charles Xavier’s lungs, as though she’d reached in with her hands and pulled it away from him to leave him gasping. The same crackling intensity that had always simmered under the surface was whipping across his thoughts like a wild sea wind across the whitecaps, and when reflex half-turned him to look at her he got a second considerable shock for his trouble. She had discarded her jacket, tie and waistcoat since he’d last seen her through Raven’s eyes, and her blouse was hopelessly rumpled in a way that somehow seemed to have skipped right past untidy on its way to inviting. Her hair was loose, spilling in dark waves across her shoulders, and her skin was still lightly flushed with an almost feverish energy that seemed to radiate from the burning smile on her lips. He tried, without much success, to either say something or close his mouth. Neither happened for several long heartbeats, and her eyebrow hitched upward subtly as she folded her arms across her chest and waited for him to pull together an answer.

He swallowed around an almost solid tension in his throat, set his jaw, and stepped past Erika into the front hallway, saying nothing. Her sudden openness only polarized his already divergent desires; he was careful not to touch her for fear of pushing her out the door or crushing her to his chest. He hung his coat carefully and tucked his gloves into the pockets. Chest tight, he made his way into the study and let the light spill into the hallway, a beacon if Erika chose to follow. The reserve bottle of Bushmill’s was still in the bottom desk drawer. By the time he slumped into his chair, he had already poured himself four fingers of whiskey and drunk one.

Erika sat down on the desk in front of him, resting her fingers on the rim of the glass and gently pushing it away from his mouth until it was resting on the blotter. Those eyes studied him, green and brown and piercing, and she drew in a slow breath of understanding as she read the pain in his eyes. Her lips twitched, just once - the shadow of a smile. “I suppose you probably... heard.”

A half-grunt, half-sob lodged in Charles’ mouth. He dragged a hand over his eyes and the pain in his voice was even more evident than in his face. “Yes. I heard. And saw. And felt. And smelled and tasted and  _god_ , Erika, I couldn’t block it out.” His grip on the tumbler had turned his knuckles white. “It wasn’t for me and I had to be there anyway.”

“Charles.” Her voice ached with sudden understanding, and she pressed her fingers along the taut white skin of his knuckles as she lifted her other hand to his face. “I... won’t and can’t apologize for what happened, but I didn’t intend to make you...”  _Watch? Feel?_ Her cheeks flushed with hot embarrassment, and she pushed away the anger that tried to claw up into her chest at the thought of him touching her mind or Raven’s  _during._ His distress was too obvious and too raw for her to believe anything but that she’d wronged him instead of the reverse. Her lips twitched again, a smile trying to fight its way to life in spite of the situation. “I thought we’d start by talking about it, but not quite like this.”

His eyes, red from--drink? tears?--dragged themselves up the curve of her hips against the desk, the untucked tails of her blouse, the hollow of her throat, up to find her eyes. “You’re always so careful. With me, with everyone. You’ve known Raven for,” he checked the clock on the mantel, “Christ, three hours.” Rather than meet her eyes, he found his gaze tracing the path of a dark curl over her shoulder. “Why now? Why her?”  _Why not me?_ He wasn’t sure if the last part slipped his shields or not. At least the whiskey was functioning as expected.

She didn’t say anything for a long time - so long that he was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to when she finally did let out a long breath and start to slowly lay out the words as though they were fine china - something that required care not to break. “Your si... Raven is an exquisite, unique creature. Something miraculous and perfect. I saw a sunset over Paris once which I can’t imagine my life without having seen - that’s what Raven is like.” She drew out a pause, then went on with a little more force. “It’s not the same with men, Charles. Not even with you. I don’t know how to …” she trailed off again into frustrated silence, her hands tracing the air as if to push her meaning out toward him that way.

The tumbler, now free of Erika’s restraint, pulled Charles’ attention. He could feel it even when looking Erika in the eye. “Is this ‘not the same’ in terms of timeline or ‘not the same’ in terms of homophilia?” He swallowed, gripped the arm of his chair tightly. “Because if I’m not what you want, I think I should know now.”  _Please not that. I want you; I need you; please._ At that point he wasn’t even sure how much he wanted his shields to function.

“I believe the technical term for my orientation is bisexual, if I understand Mister Kinsey’s work correctly.” Erika’s sense flared with a cold edge of hurt, but she brought her hand back to his face and gave him a look of fierce and direct intensity that left no room for him to avoid her eyes or the hard sincerity of her voice. “If I didn’t want you, Charles, then I wouldn’t have kissed you - much less come home tonight with you, as ill-advised as part of me tells me that was. I’m not sure if I ought to be reassured about you staying out of my head or upset with you for not being able to tell from the rest of me by the fact that you don’t know that by now.”

A great wave of tension left Charles, and he half-smiled up at her sheepishly. “I did feel that from you before, but the way you looked at her...I was afraid after Raven you’d change your mind about me.” He covered her hand with his own, leaning into her touch. “I really don’t give a damn if you like women as long as you like me.” _Maybe I’m a bit upset about it being Raven._ He traced a slow circle on her wrist. 

“She isn’t the first woman I’ve been close to, Charles.” Erika gave a sharp little toss of her head, a smile of exasperated fondness finally breaking onto her face.

“So what is the difference?” It was gently asked. “I could read you if you’d prefer that to talking.”

“No.” She said it just a little sharply, then brushed his face in silent apology before he could flinch. The smile was gone, now, but she didn’t look away from him. “I haven’t found men to be particularly … particularly trustworthy, Charles. After Auschwitz, I met Aaron in the displaced persons camps and... I was young and desperate for a family, and he promised me that he’d take care of me. I tried to be a good wife, and I thought that I was even if I was... even if I couldn’t give him children. Then I told him about my … abilities. They were growing, you see - not just spinning spoons and tugging coins.” Her eyes darkened, lips compressing to a hard line, and the hand that wasn’t resting on his face tightened on the edge of the desk as though to leave her fingers imprinted there. “He abandoned me two days later. I have not heard word of him since. I did not make that mistake twice, but every man who has taken an interest in me since I came to England has either wanted to take me to bed and be done with me or to make a proper English wife of me. I do not have any intention of allowing myself to be changed for the affections of a man - or a woman, for that matter. Not again.”

She saw sadness and anger mingled on his face, felt the edges of them in the air between them. The fingers of his free hand drummed briefly on the comfortably worn surface of the desk. Then the air was just air again, and on Charles’ face there was a thread of amusement mixed in with the rest. “I think that anyone trying to change you would be like trying to forbid the rain.” He smiled before his eyes widened in a way that made him seem resigned to his own recklessness. “And...maybe this is stupid of me to say, but if I were going to change you into someone you’re not, I’d’ve done it by now.” The weight of what he’d said hung over the both of them. If he’d been alone, that thought would have been the end of his current drink and the beginnings of his next. “I am dangerous, Erika, I can’t deny that. I just...” He sat up higher in his chair and leaned just an inch more into Erika’s air. His voice was quiet. “If you need time, it’s yours. If you need acts of devotion, they’re yours too.” As wrung-out and tipsy as he was, his eyes still blazed with intensity. “Whatever you want of me, for as long as you want.”

“Charles....” She looked down at him, expression unreadable, for a very long time indeed before she bent down and surprised him with a kiss. It wasn’t long or passionate, but it was short and sharp and did a very good job of making clear it was not going to be the last. “You’re quite mad, and I think I must be as well - I actually found that statement comforting. Perhaps you could follow my usual advice: stop drinking, stop talking, and show me somewhere I can sit with you in private?”

Without a word, Charles pushed back from the desk, stood, and opened the window with a rush of frigid air. Wincing at the temperature difference, he tossed three fingers of rather good whiskey into the back garden before once more sealing his house against the elements. He turned, and without taking his eyes off Erika set the empty glass on the desk, took her by the hand, and led the way out of the study.

Her eyes shone in the darkened hallway, an echo of how he’d seen her through Raven. He remembered the eye-watering bright pain he got from clutching a full teacup the day after he’d burned his fingers on the autoclave. Some things didn’t stop hurting right away.

He looked away, and she drew his jaw around until he was looking down at her again. He ran his thumb over Erika’s knuckles, her hand small and warm, fine-boned and powerful. Her mind’s electric hum softened the shadows and the intrusion of neighboring minds. Charles let himself step just a little closer. They stopped at his bedroom, each standing with a hand on the door, facing each other for a long moment. Then Erika laughed softly and pushed the door open, Charles smiled, and everything felt a bit warmer.

They went in together, and she shut the door behind them.


	15. Chapter 15

Holding her gloved hands in front of the heater vent, Raven shivered in Charles’ car as she waited for the engine to warm up. They were driving through sleepy Oxford in the overcast morning, seemingly normal, but Raven was almost afraid at the changes in her. She was giddy with the memory of Erika: elegant, strong fingers exploring every inch of her, kneading, caressing, sometimes scratching; the slow drag of the palms of her hands over Raven’s scales; the amazing heat in Erika’s gaze and the fire it kindled in Raven’s body. She could still feel the physicist’s hands on her like a brand, the mark of her touch burned into Raven’s soul. How could anyone not see it? How could they not know that she had let another woman touch her that way?

As they walked into the supermarket, nobody raised cries of alarm or even gave them a second glance. Raven felt disappointment that she was still outwardly the same, but nonetheless relaxed a little. She was safe for now; nobody else was Charles.

While checking a carton of eggs for broken shells, she glanced at him. He had been tense and awkward all morning. She decided she couldn’t stand it anymore.

 _This isn’t just about me being blue in your house, is it._ She formed the thought clearly, what Charles had told her was “loudly” all those years ago, carefully placing the eggs in the cart and studying him. He snorted.

 _No,_ he answered as he selected some cheese. _And you weren’t just blue, you were naked. Is clothing too much to ask?_

She checked eggs and cheese off the list and made her way towards the butcher counter. “Maybe it is.” She savored Charles’ indignant, wordless surprise. While Raven perused cuts of beef, Charles frowned at the pastrami.

“I couldn’t help overhearing. Last night.” He turned away to ostensibly examine some baked goods. _My telepathy has gotten either stronger or worse. I hear more thoughts at longer range and it’s just as difficult as always to block them out._

“You heard...” Raven broke off, heat rising in her face, meals of any sort completely slipping her mind. Last night crowded its way to the front of her mind: Erika’s fiery stare, hands on skin and scales, clothing rumpled on the floor, pleasure she hadn’t imagined possible coursing through her.

Charles’ voice was low and rough. “Yes.”

Hot mindless anger threatened to overwhelm Raven. She stood still for a moment, a loaf of bread held in clenched fingers, trying to build shields. She didn’t think her thoughts would be anything like clear. “Dammit, Charles, that was supposed to be _mine._ ”

He picked a bag of rolls off the shelf and tossed it roughly in the cart. “It was.” _It was all for you._ She saw flashes of Charles’ memory of her experiences, peppered with his own thoughts, feelings, memories. The look on Erika’s face as she stripped Raven, Charles knowing it was nothing to do with him. Charles, wanting so badly to touch Erika and often afraid of losing her. The clawing fear and pain that constricted his heart as he watched Erika throw all caution to the wind with Raven when she had always held Charles at arm’s length. Frustration, jealousy, hope; discomfort at the breach of the sibling relationship they’d had for so long.

Her eyes refocused on the bread she’d squashed. Guiltily tossing it in the cart, she took a deep breath. In the corner of her eye she could see Charles doing a crappy impression of someone whose biggest problem was the Christmas menu. “I’m sorry about the bad timing.” She turned a corner to get to the canned goods and motioned for Charles to follow her. “And for...broadcasting.” As she picked up canned peaches, he reached over and squeezed her hand gently. _Neither of us could have helped it, love._ Then he smiled at her almost mischeviously.

“I’ll forgive you if you promise you won’t give me any more surprise visits.”

Raven chuckled. “All right. No more surprise visits.” Charles looked expectantly at her, making her laugh. “Okay, okay, I promise.”

Charles smiled broadly and caught her in a hug. “I forgive you.” _It’s been a day that needs plenty of forgiveness, it seems._

“I’m pretty sure it’s the only way to avoid murder.” They both laughed, and the cans made it into the cart without crushing anything else.

***

After they’d finished the shopping and driven home arguing pleasantly about what to make for Christmas dinner, Raven disappeared to her room. She dropped her disguise, tossed her clothes on the floor, and stood looking at herself in the stand mirror.

She’d done the same thing after waking up disoriented, expecting to see the wall of her Cambridge apartment instead of the wood paneling of Charles’ Oxford house. Once she’d remembered where she was, the events of the longest night of the year had come crashing back into her head. _Exquisite. Unique and unspeakably beautiful._

She turned in front of the glass, looking herself up and down for the second time that morning. Her scales shone in the winter light, reflecting iridescent blues, greens, and purples.

They hugged her curves, protected her, and shimmered when she shifted. Erika had loved tracing the ridges and whorls. Raven now did the same, running her hands from her collarbone down her arm; from knee to hip; from cheekbones to pulse point and down her throat, down her spine. It was pleasure and vulnerability; exposing her real skin to the air felt wonderful and frightening.

She left for the front living room where Charles was stacking a pile of board games. He started and averted his eyes when she descended the stairs, shoulders bunching and massaging his forehead. A narrow pain jabbed through her, and she smiled.

“It’s funny how nervous this makes you.” She curled into an armchair. He huffed.

“Nobody wants to see their sister naked.” Still not looking at her, he pulled out a flat box. “Parchesi?”

“Sure.” Raven watched him as he set up the game. After he didn’t have that as an excuse any more, he looked up at her with a false smile. “Would you like to go first or shall I?”

She held him with a stare, making him look at her. After a minute, her lips quirked up at the edges. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

His mask collapsed. “Raven...”

“I hate hiding, Charles.”

He threw his hands up. “So now you’re a nudist?”

She gestured emphatically. “Most of my life is built on hiding. I want to feel free _somewhere_ , even if it’s only in your house.”

“You can be blue while wearing clothes, you know.”

Raven rested her head on the back of the chair. She closed her eyes. “I’m broadcasting. Maybe that will help.” The upholstery had a very distinct texture against her neck and shoulders. She focused on the feel of it, and of the luxurious rug under the toes of one foot. She ran her hand up and down the arm of the chair a few times before picking up one of the game pieces. It was a small, cold, metal thing, with rounded edges pressed into her palm. “You’re getting this?” she verified.

When she opened her eyes, Charles was staring ahead with unfocused eyes. “Yeah.” His voice was a distant murmur.

“Alright, I’m going to change, for comparison.” Her skin rippled and then there was blonde Raven, sitting in her jeans and sweater. As she changed, Charles shivered.

“That still feels wondrous strange.”

Raven said nothing, but leaned her head back on the chair again. The upholstery was recognizable but dull, even where her bare neck rested against it. Her toes dug into the carpet, somehow less soft than before. It felt like she held the game piece in gloved hands. Even the air felt muffled, distant, flat somehow. Sometimes it made her feel safe in a crowd of strangers. Today it made her want to destroy something.

She focused on the sensations a moment longer before shifting back into her natural self.

“Do you see?” She hugged her arms around herself, rubbing her biceps as if to reassure her of their reality. “It’s always like that, when I’m shifted. It’s like I can’t really touch the world.” She suddenly threw herself to her feet, pacing. “And when I get somewhere hidden, I change back as fast as I can. I have to get out.” Her path took her around the chairs and sofa, circling the living room. She wondered if she looked like a caged beast.

“Raven...I’m sorry.”

She snorted. “That’s just great.”

“No, I mean, I’m sorry I never realized. I should have paid attention.” His eyes followed her. “I suppose I have been...self-involved.”

Raven stopped pacing. She looked at Charles from across the room. “To be fair, I never told you. But you never asked.”

He grimaced a little. “There’s been a lot going on lately...and, okay, there’s always a lot going on. I worry about you. I’m proud of you, Radcliffe and all...” Another hand through his hair. “I guess I just got caught up in all the outside stuff that I didn’t stop to think about the inside.” He snorted a laugh. “I tried not to read your mind and ended up not thinking about your feelings at all. God, I really am an idiot.”

Raven stepped closer, a half-smile on her face. “Yeah, you are.” She sat down on the couch next to him. “But I love you anyway.” He grasped her hand and smiled.

“I love you too, Raven.”

He glanced up at a corner, thinking. “Last night, I felt your joy and the reason for it, and...” he winced, “despite some of my other feelings about it, I’m still glad that someone could give that to you.”

Raven’s cheeks darkened, but she smiled. “You’re a good man, Charles.” She leaned in to hug him.

His eyes widened again and he tensed up like she was a two-hundred pound rugby player. He patted her awkwardly on the back.

“Um, so, I won’t harp on you about clothes any more, but you have to understand it’s going to take me some getting used to.”

Raven laughed and pulled back. “It’ll be good for you,” she teased. “Now, I’m going to turn up the radiator.”

Then it was Charles’ turn to laugh. “Not too high; I don’t want to live in my underthings.”

He didn’t have to, but it got warm enough that they did end up playing tropical-themed Parchesi. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Hodgins is a random cameo of Jack Hodgins from Bones. Because we can.

The Chancellor’s New Year’s party was not precisely a small event, and it was one that Erika Lehnsherr had spent years quite scrupulously avoiding - its invitations were numbered in the thousands, after all, even if only a fraction of those invited actually attended. Her own annual invitation had been as much an honorary technicality as any sort of serious offer, but Samuel Weston was an important man who regularly _did_ attend and had wanted to make a point about the value of his practical experimenter. She had quietly thanked him for the gesture, carefully kept the invitations each year, and thought no more about it.

It was Raven, oddly, who had convinced her. When Erika had made clear she wouldn’t be coming to Christmas dinner, Charles had immediately begun to present her with a selection of invitations for New Years. She had seriously considered turning that idea down as well, but Raven had been so crestfallen at her refusal to join them for dinner on Christmas and so excited when the Chancellor’s party had been mentioned that Erika hadn’t had the heart to refuse. It had been a terrible bother to find a dress she could wear to such a formal event on short notice, but she knew any number of women in Oxford who could sew a proper dress and thus had only needed to obtain the fabric. Troublesome, frustrating and possibly a bad idea to begin with, she had been regretting agreeing to attend right up until the moment that Charles had opened the door in his fine evening suit and invited her in for tea before they left. By himself, he would have been stunning - fine features, brilliant blue eyes, soft brown hair and the crisp white and black of his suit. Raven, though... Raven had found or brought a striking black dress that went well with her assumed features, and that Erika had already spent far too much of the night already remembering wrapped around the girl’s natural body. She was - slightly guiltily - aware that she was probably filling Charles’ head with the image, but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize for it. Getting out of the house without doing something positively indiscreet right there in the parlor had been all she could manage.

They were both stunning, and they were both hers, and the only thing wrong with the evening was that she couldn’t tell everyone in sight. That was a dangerous thought, and terribly indiscreet, but she couldn’t seem to help it - the idea pulsed in her head like the hammer of her heart against her ribs, and she had to remind herself again and again that it was _dangerous_ to let anyone see exactly how much she wanted them both. Even to let them see it... the fear of that had driven her away after the meal, long enough to greet a few acquaintances and get her breath under control. She and Charles had come as a couple, he had brought his sister, and that was all anyone else would think of it. She told herself that a dozen times, and eventually it seemed to help.

Finally, she shook off her dull conversation with a professor from the chemistry department and went looking for Charles.

 ***

Charles sipped his drink--sparkling water that only slightly disappointed him--and listened to the rumpled Dr. Hodgins, ecologist.

“There’s always a link between organisms in the same area. It’s there in your own work, Xavier.”

“If one species changes, others do too.”

“Not just that. Only two things can happen: either everything in the area adapts together, or one new species disrupts the whole ecosystem.”

Charles nodded, wondering about the implications of collective upheaval, when he felt a familiar humming buzz to his left and behind him. He turned towards Erika, smiling broadly. The black satin of her dress made the contrast of her pale skin and dark curls even more captivating, and the elbow-length gloves highlighted her fierce gestures. He had drawn her out into debate over dessert just to see her argumentative vibrancy. Even the fact that she’d obviously lusted after Raven couldn’t dampen his mood entirely. There he was, in front of most of Oxford, with Erika.

“Jack, I’d like you to meet Erika Lehnsherr. Erika, this is Dr. Hodgins.” He carefully didn’t mention the topic they’d been conversing on. It was too nice an evening to complicate with tense discussions about the future of his species. Everyone danced through the steps of polite introductions, and then Charles extended his hand.

“Would you like to dance?”

Erika hesitated, smiled. Took his hand in hers. “Yes, Charles. Excuse us, Doctor Hodgins - I do look forward to your next paper. _Expansion and the Common Cockroach_ was entirely worth reading.” They glided onto the dance floor, and left Hodgins gaping in their wake.

The band was playing a rich, vivid waltz with hints of jazz thrown in at the edges, the sort of little stylistic touches that said they were used to smaller spaces and rowdier crowds. Erika settled into the familiar pattern of the three-beat waltz with a soft chuckle, leaning a little into Charles’ arm. “You look surprised, Charles. You didn’t expect me to know who Professor Hodgins was?”

Charles savored the warmth and movement of her shoulder blade under his hand. “I confess that I don’t know most of the people here, especially those not in my own department.” His waltz was a little rusty; he’d avoided fancy parties as much as he could even while his mother was alive. However, after a few steps, either his dancing skills were warming up, or his sense of Erika’s mind prevented him from stepping on her toes. Either way, he was glad.

She flicked her eyes up at him in a way that suggested she was debating a particularly pointed remark, but she seemed to settle a milder tone in the end. “I had wondered what Simmons meant when he said they weren’t used to seeing you here. I can’t imagine you’ve been playing the shut-in for the last year or two?”

He studied her face for a moment, now moving almost perfectly in time with her and the music. “I kept up with my own department.” _In the last five years I’ve gotten much stronger,_ he added silently. _Making my world...smaller...was the only thing that helped._ He looked down at Erika, elegant and beautiful in her strength. “Anyway, they’re not the reason I’m here.” They swept through the dance floor, passing dozens of couples and any number of attractive young women. He allowed himself a glance here and there but was more than happy and a little smug to be dancing with Erika.

 _You’ll have to do better. No professor can afford not to know his peers - not at Oxford, anyway._ She smiled up at him, shaping the thoughts with care and force as she pushed them toward him, and then murmured in a soft voice that surprised him with its gentleness. “I’m glad you convinced me to come, Charles. You are quite … striking.”

He smiled with the corner of his mouth, pleased and flirtatious. “I’m so glad you agreed. You’re amazing in that dress.” _Really amazing. If it wouldn’t embarrass you, I’d kiss you right now._

 _Charles!_ The way she thought his name was rich with exasperated laughter, embarrassed pleasure and the subtlest curl of heat - she was still forming the thoughts consciously toward him, but they were close enough now that he could feel the bleed of her emotions through the static of her presence. _You really are a very improper man._

He grinned. “You knew that from the start and yet, here you are.” He sent her a moment of his own delight and desire, loving the way her dark eyes widened and her breath hitched almost imperceptibly.

As the waltz ended, they glided to a stop. Charles lowered his hands and stepped away from her just a little too slowly to be entirely proper. Still smiling, he gestured around the room. “Another dance? Chatting with the peers? A little air?”

She leaned up slightly to kiss his cheek, a polite enough gesture, and as her lips touched his skin the image flashed between them like a jolt of electricity between two contacts:  _her mouth against his, fierce and urgent, her hands tangled in the lapels of his jacket and ruining his shirt as she pinned him against the wall of the balcony outside and…_ _._ The image cut off sharply as she pushed the thought away, cheeks flushing subtly with embarrassment, and then their eyes met and she felt her breath stop as she realized he knew - that he’d seen. Her hands tightened on his arms, almost painfully, and he could feel the sudden thunder in her chest as if it were his own.

Eyes stormy and breathing a little faster than a waltz would account for, Charles mentally searched the balcony. _There’s no one there. I can turn everyone’s eyes away._

 _Charles!_ It was different this time, shocked and a little scandalized. Angry - more at herself than at him, though it was hard to tell the difference. She struggled with herself for a moment, visibly trying to form the thought that she didn’t _want_ to to do any such thing, and finally she gave up and resorted to her voice - a less private messenger, but one who might at least possibly still be relied on. “I am not going to … to... _maul_ you on the balcony.”

 _Damn_. Stamping down his frustration, Charles closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and gently removed Erika’s hands from his arms. He was proud that his voice was almost completely normal. “Would you like something to eat or drink?”

“No.” She fumed at him for a moment, lips compressed, and then something seemed to give way inside her and a tiny laugh bubbled up against her teeth as she took his hand in hers and squeezed it for a moment. “Not exactly fair of me to be upset with you, is it?”

He smiled and visibly relaxed. He was almost back to breathing normally. Then his gaze fixed somewhere behind Erika, and he help out a hand in greeting. “Raven! Are you having a good time?”

The young woman took Charles’ hand, beaming. “Yes. Everything’s so elegant, and I had a wonderful conversation with Dr. Donovan about group vs. individual responses to stimuli.” She gestured with her glass of--Charles noted with distant envy--white wine. “And I love the band. How about you two?”

“Dancing. A very fine waltz, in fact.” Erika turned and embraced Raven with open warmth and just a note of relief - the picture of sisterly friendship, as far as anyone around them was concerned. That neither Erika nor his sister thought there was anything sisterly about it, however, was unfortunately and entirely obvious to Charles. Erika bent, whispered something in Raven’s ear that drew a short, warm laugh, then looked at Charles with a firm certainty in her face. “We are going to dance, and you are going to stay away from the punch. Try not to get into any trouble while we’re gone.”

Charles took another breath. Slowly. “Have a nice time.” His teeth were only a little clenched. Turning, he had every intention of spending some time on the balcony--alone--literally and figuratively cooling off. And definitely not listening to the women’s emotions or thoughts during the dance. Probably. He needed to find a yogi or someone to help with shielding. Maybe a silly helmet.

As it turned out, he didn’t make it nearly that far. Just past the buffet table, a man he didn’t know actually managed to surprise him with a tap on the shoulder. It wasn’t easy to do that to Charles, but in his defense he was more than a little distracted by the way Raven was thinking about the curve of Erika’s throat. What was less easy to explain was how close that light tap came to making him jump out of his skin. _Calm. I am calm. Should really find that yogi._

The man was tall and distinguished, with the sort of broad-shouldered frame that took exercise easily and was not predisposed to fat, and his brown hair was just beginning to turn a delicate gray at the temples. Deep-set and intelligent eyes above paternal, genial features completed an appearance that would have been at home in any country manor or respectable gentleman’s club. The mind, though - that was something else again. Pleasant and warm, yes, but with a piercing and restless energy that reminded Charles distinctly of Erika. He extended his hand to Charles sharply, studying him, and his voice was cheerfully polite. “Hello, you must be young Xavier from Pembroke College. Charles, isn’t it?” He knew it was, and the sharp focus of his thoughts tightened muscles in Charles’s back. “I’m Samuel Weston, of Trinity College. I thought we might have a word.”

Charles took the man’s hand with a pasted-on smile and a sinking feeling. “Yes, I believe we’ve met once.” It was easy enough to see the memory in the man’s mind, despite not remembering it himself. He also caught a collection of impressions regarding Erika--fondness, respect, and a fierce protective impulse--and knew he was in trouble. “You’ve been working on the Unified Field Theory, am I right?”

“Among other lines of research, yes. Unified Field is more Miss Lehnsherr’s passion than mine.” Weston’s smile was just as pleasant, but he brushed past the thought of his own work with barely a glance - not a good sign. He had something on his mind and didn’t plan to be distracted. “I understand that the two of you have been seeing each other socially for some months now?”

It was going to be one of _those_ talks. “Yes, we have.” He was a little taken aback; Erika had always seemed so self-contained and it seemed odd that Professor Weston would step in. Then he realized he was being stupid again. There was no reason why Erika wouldn’t have people who cared for her enough to 'have a word' with suitors, and the professor was smart enough to do it while Erika wasn’t looking.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen her wear a dress in years. It’s good to see her here, of course, but should I take it from her coming on your arm that things have gone a fair bit beyond mere social friendship?” Weston was watching him very carefully now, searchingly, and the worry in his mind when it became too loud for Charles to avoid hearing was so sharply and clearly in Erika’s voice that Charles nearly turned to see if she’d shouted at him. _‘He would be the last man in Oxford I would consider. His rudeness and lack of wit are ... exceeded only by his poor behavior when it comes to liquor and women. A callow, arrogant and careless young man....’_ It wasn’t Weston’s own opinion - he could feel that much in it - but it was an idea that concerned the older man a great deal.

Charles turned to grab a canape from a passing tray, using the opportunity to hide his wince. He reminded himself that Erika’s opinion of him had changed, and caught a glance of her and Raven sailing gracefully over the dance floor. He smiled at their restrained enjoyment of each other.

“It has, to my considerable surprise. I’m fairly sure she hated me to begin with.”

“Volubly.” Weston chuckled softly, his tension relaxing slightly at the admission, and he followed the direction of Charles’s eyes long enough to straighten with a jolt of surprised pleasure. “My word, but I don’t believe I’ve ever once seen her dance. With two partners in one night, no less! Bless me, Xavier, but if you can do that twice a year I’ll get the Literature students writing you sonnets.”

Charles blinked, both surprised and stuck on the phrase 'two partners.' He shook it off and fiddled in Weston’s mind, finding his happiness to see Erika doing something she liked but never did. There was another memory there, of a too-serious girl of twenty-four whose dark eyes never laughed and whose narrow lips never smiled, whose halting English was as painfully careful as her mathematics were rapid and brilliant. Knowing why she had been so joyless pained Charles, and knowing he had brightened her life called up a fierce determination to bring her more happiness. In any case, the physicist’s affection for Erika made Charles feel they had a camaraderie. “Oh, I don’t know, Weston,” he said with a slow smile. “If she found out about it I’d never hear the end of it.”

That earned him a quiet laugh, and a hint of knowing respect in the older man’s eyes. “Neither would I, for that matter. She can be quite a force of nature, can’t she?”

Charles remembered a dark night, an argument, and Erika in a fury of concentration, lit up by the headlights of the wild car she’d tossed aside with a wave of her arms. “Yes.” He was looking into the middle distance. “Yes she can.”

“That was what Tom never really understood. He always thought of her as a wounded bird, someone who needed saving - not as the bravest woman I’ve ever met, or you’re ever likely to.” At the blankness of Charles’ expression, Weston tightened his lips and sighed. “Damn it, I thought she’d have mentioned him before. Now I’ve gone and said too much. Still...” he gave Charles a long, speculative look and then a short, sharp nod. “You probably ought to know anyway. Thomas Baker teaches Classical Literature, Latin in particular. He’s up at Cambridge now, but back in the fifties he was here as a lecturer and he fell rather head-over-heels with Erika. She liked him, or at least I think she did - she’d say that he was good company, or that they had a good time together, but never more than that. Trouble was, he kept trying to marry her and get her to quit lab work so he could support her. He never said it in so many words, of course, but I think he felt that working as a ‘lab menial’ was beneath her.” Weston paused, took in the look of horror on Charles’ face, and nodded in wry sympathy. “As you can imagine, she handed him his head every time. It took him three years to stop asking and move away.”

Charles nodded gravely and kept his contempt to himself. How could anyone with half a brain think Erika would want to 'settle down' to stare at furniture and cook all day?

“I see. She did tell me about him in a general sense,” he reassured Weston, “so you’ve only supplied the specifics.” Realizing he hadn’t really talked to anyone about Erika before, he glared at his hors d’oeuvre. What she’d told him about Auchwiz and what he’d inferred had been almost always in the back of his mind for the past several weeks, an ugly shadow he had to flee or fight down regularly. “I hate that the world has been so cruel to her,” he bit out quietly. “I love her fierceness and strength but I wish she weren’t afraid so much of the time.”

Unburdened, he felt a little lighter if no less raw. He sighed. “And now _I’ve_ probably said too much.”

“Probably.” Weston’s lips twitched with a hint of wry laughter that he was too polite to share. “I’m sure you know the drubbing she’d give you for saying anything of the sort, so I won’t belabor the point. You do seem to know what you’re doing with her, however, so I think I can trust you not to muck things up.”

Charles let out a breath and smiled. “Thank you. That means a lot coming from someone who’s worked with her so much.”

“Just don’t prove me wrong.” Weston glanced up over Charles’s shoulder, then chuckled. It seemed to take a decade off his age, and it put a gleam in his eyes. “Speaking of working with her, I had better go before she gets over here and discovers I’ve been haranguing you. Good evening.”

He made good his escape before the familiar hum of Erika’s presence started dancing up Charles’ spine, but only barely. He turned towards the vibration and found Erika and Raven standing decorously apart but with an almost palpable connection between them. As she looked at Raven, Erika’s mouth was turned up subtly; the lines of her body, still forceful, were no longer brittle.

Raven glowed, but it was a radiance Charles had never seen in her. Dancing with Erika had filled her senses, dampened as they were, and generated a hungry heat under her disguise. He caught flashes of noisy thoughts: images of Erika’s gloved hands, the feeling of her strength under satin, a pleasant dizziness from wine and attraction. Even if he couldn’t have felt it streaming out of her, Charles would have been able to guess that Raven was completely taken with the physicist. Not too obviously, though; the other guests mistook it for admiration.

There was something else, too; frustration, hurt, and anger simmered under her enjoyment of the evening. And when Erika turned to look at Charles, intense gaze hiding a smile, Raven experienced a small spike of--guilt? jealousy? Charles wished he could look to see how all those emotions fit together.

Instead, he greeted the women once again. “Hello again, ladies. Did you enjoy the foxtrot?”

“Immensely.” Erika’s voice was low and rich with pleasure, a subtle twitch of her gloved fingers drawing Raven in without any need for direct contact until their hands were almost - but not quite - touching. Her eyes, though, were only for Charles. “It’s almost midnight, you know. I understand they will be opening the back door at any moment to let out the old year.”

Charles gave her his arm, trying to keep the hope in his eyes to a minimum. Erika’s good mood was written in her vibration and on her face, but he thought that ‘mauling’ was probably not on the itinerary. He extended his other arm to Raven, smiling. “Watching the Times Square show on TV is warmer, but this tradition makes me feel like things really do change for the better.”

Raven looked a moment at Erika before threading her arm through Charles’. “Things certainly change.” She slid a sidelong glance at Erika’s hand before smiling up at her brother. “Maybe they will be better.”

“I want some air.” Erika turned and smoothly propelled all three of them - herself, Charles, and Raven pulled along to the side - toward the balcony with a fine disregard for the way they pressed through the weight of the excited crowd. “The two of you will join me?”

“Of course.” Again, Charles said sincerely things that otherwise would be trite or preposterous. Raven nodded her assent. As they moved, the other guests found themselves inclined to move away at just the right time.

Erika’s smile of pleasure repaid the effort of that little trick a dozen times over.

The night air was crisp and cool, just sharp enough to catch in the lungs, and Erika broke away from Charles’ arm to cover the distance to the railing in three long strides as her eyes swung up to take in the heavens. Oxford was ablaze with light, every old building gleaming with celebration, but even through the glare the stars were still visible enough to drink in and treasure. She stood there a long moment, balanced on the rail with her gloved hands braced tight, and Charles could taste the wild delight that was coursing through her as if it were his own. Then she turned and looked at him, eyes flashing, and her voice was clear and sharp in his head as she forced the words out with authority.  _Make them leave us alone, Charles. All of them._

Still captivated by the sight and feel of her, Charles pressed two fingers to his temple. Raven turned to watch through the tall windows as the Chancellor, seemingly of his own volition, walked to the door farthest from the balcony to make his usual speech. The crowd turned to look at him as one, and those who thought about looking out into the night found themselves deciding that the speech, the punch and food, or their companions were far more interesting. Raven stood shivering and blinking at the phenomenon.  _He really has gotten stronger._ The look she turned to him was one of mixed admiration and misgiving.

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Nobody will notice anything out of the ordinary. They think it’s all their own ideas.” Raven shook her head, mouth open to respond, when Erika’s silhouette caught her eye. Her breath caught, and as she moved to stand next to Erika she towed Charles along by the elbow. “You were right about the cold. Beautiful, though.” She hugged herself in her shawl, pulled on a glove, and stood looking out at the glittering darkness. _They really won’t see us, Charles?_

 _We may as well be invisible._ He really, really wished that his jacket was warmer, or that he’d thought to bring his overcoat. When Raven twined her fingers through Erika’s and rested their hands on the railing, he felt their delight and a small jealous pang of his own. He looked up at the stars but quickly returned to the physicist’s profile and the night through her eyes. Soon the only things in his mind were the detached concentration of crowd management and Erika. He stepped closer and rested his hand on the railing next to hers.

Her arm slid around his waist, drawing him closer, and she tucked her head against his neck as she looked at Raven with those gleaming eyes of stained green that left Raven dizzy and Charles swaying with the echo of her sudden focus on the softness of Erika’s lips. “You two,” Erika breathed, “are going to kill me.” From her lips, it almost sounded like a hope.

Raven’s fingers tightened around her own, and Charles gently squeezed her to him and smiled into her hair. “At least it would be a pleasant death, I hope?”

“Infinitely.” Erika’s eyes closed, and for a moment she was so completely still that Charles was beginning to worry he’d done something wrong. Then her whisper kissed his throat, as soft as moonlight. “It’s midnight, Charles.” To their side, Raven looked away, defaulting to the known rules of politeness while her emotions were in such a confusing tangle.

As Charles pulled back from embracing Erika, he wondered distantly if she’d felt the tiny movements of a clock somewhere. Cupping her face in one hand, he leaned down and kissed her. The stars from a dozen nights surrounded them, and she drank him in - not passively, but with a fierce eagerness that brought her gloved hand to his face while the other stayed wrapped with Raven’s. She kissed him the way she’d kissed him in his bedroom, like there was nothing else in the entire world but him and that moment - like she was searing a mark into him.

Then her mouth left his, a sudden sense of abandonment, and he could feel the shock of Raven’s surprise as the same hand which had held Charles’ cheek caught the curve of her jaw and turned her. Drew her in. Pinned her, so that Erika’s warm lips could claim hers with a fierce, blazing desire that knew nothing of shame or rules or anything less than the sky above them.

Everything in Raven danced. She let her disguise flicker away under Erika’s passion, wrapped indigo arms around her, and poured herself into the kiss. Her heart was racing with the glorious concordance and danger of her skin and the night and Erika; nothing had ever felt so true, not even the night she had spent under the other woman’s hands.

Charles momentarily lost control of the crowd and fell one step forward, body following Erika’s. He meant to look away but couldn’t and he braced himself to be ripped open again. He’d been dreading it all week. Instead, while something squirmed in him to see Erika kissing someone else and for that someone to be Raven, the pain didn’t come. Erika was beautiful-- _they_ were beautiful. He watched and felt their kiss, wondering, while he gathered the party’s reins back. Somehow Erika, Raven and Charles weren’t two and one, but three.

When it looked like the women were going to come up for air, Charles stepped next to them and wrapped them both in his arms, squeezing them all together. “Happy New Year, loves.”

Erika laughed, soft and rich, and pulled Raven tighter to her as she curled into the warmth of Charles’ arms and trusted him - at least for the moment - to keep them safe. Something in her looked down into the open joy of Raven’s stolen face and spat at the thought of safety in invisibility, in hiding, but that was something for the new year. Something for the tomorrow that was becoming today. Tonight, she could be happy.

Morning would come soon enough.


	17. Chapter 17

**New York, January 19, 1963**

In a small colonial house about a mile from Radcliffe, Raven sipped a beer while listening with half an ear to a friend of a friend’s conversation. Jazz and Rock’n’roll LPs played too loudly, the living room was crowded with people dancing, and in the kitchen Martha was putting the finishing touches on Elise’s birthday cake. The young man sitting opposite Raven on the sofa was going on about some movie or other. The beer was too warm. She’d been here for an hour and already her skin was crawling under her disguise.

“Well? Wanna dance?” He rested a hand on her knee.

“Sorry, no thanks.” She stood, making her way towards Martha. The movie aficionado laughed loudly behind her and began flirting with another woman. Raven felt her shoulders tense. She pasted on a smile.

“Hi Martha, do you need help with anything?” Looking at the beautifully finished icing, she hoped it was a moot point.

“Thanks, Raven. I’m done with the cake, but can you get the candles on? I’ll go get everyone’s attention.”

This time Raven’s smile was grateful. “Sure, no problem. Just yell when you want me to bring it out.”

Martha shooed the other guests out of the kitchen. Raven set the candles in the icing, lighting them one by one. The music stopped, Martha projected her amazing opera voice, and the crowd was momentarily subdued. Raven brought the cake out while everyone was singing.

Elise beamed when Raven set the cake in front of her. Raven smiled as she joined the chorus, clapped when Elise blew out the candles. Everyone wished the hostess a happy birthday, there was a traditional amount of good-natured teasing, and then pieces of cake circulated throughout the room. Raven turned hers down and made for the bathroom.

Closing the door and pulling the cafe curtain over the window, Raven let her skin ripple to blue. She let out a sigh of relief as she stretched, shook out her hair, and massaged her shoulders. Her indigo face contrasted sharply with the soft pink bathroom.

Some days her untamed skin seemed ridiculous in a normal room. Other days it was her surroundings which seemed laughable, like paper walls around a tiger. Her grin was white against the darkness of her face, her eyes gleaming.

She put the bathroom to its normal use and stood to wash her hands. She studied the white lather as it built around and fell from her blue, blue hands. She wondered how many tigers went to birthday parties.

An entwined couple slammed the door open and Raven squeaked as her disguise flashed back.

“Oh, sorry,” the woman laughed. She was draped over the man, back to Raven, and had only seen the psychology student in the corner of her eye. Unfortunately, the dark-haired man had one hand around the woman and one pressed against the door, and he was staring intensely straight at Raven.

She felt all the blood drain from her face, grabbed her purse, and shoved past the couple. After waving good-bye to Martha and Elise, she dashed out of the house, almost running. On her way home, she looked back every ten steps or so to be sure she wasn’t followed, even when she was close to her dormitory. After locking her door, she threw herself into her bed, curling up and hugging herself. That night was the first in a long time that she hadn’t dropped her disguise to sleep.

***

Three days later, Raven was walking on the Cambridge Common. The skeletal trees framed panes of cold blue sky above her and her boots crunched satisfyingly on the old snow and sanded pathways of the park. Her cheeks were warm and her breath puffed out ahead of her. The cold made all the layers she wore much more tolerable. It was a trick she had discovered her first winter with Charles.

She wasn’t entirely alone in her leisure pursuits. There were always a few others walking the Common, even in the winter; people with dogs, people without homes, people who needed to think. She passed a knot of young men watching as another group dragged a sled uphill. A rangy man in sunglasses and a leather jacket detached himself from the group, crushed his cigarette underfoot, and waved at Raven.

“Hey.”

Raven tensed and continued walking. Her pulse sped up and she seriously considered running, or asking someone else for help. Behind his dark lenses, she saw the dark-haired, intense man from the party.

He trotted to catch up with her when she didn’t stop. “I said, hey. Are you always this rude?”

“Only with strange men.”

He stuck out a hand, following her step-for-step. “I’m Marcus. Elise and I work together at the restaurant.”

Raven looked between his hand and the path ahead and back again. She sighed, turned, took his hand. “Raven. She and I lived in the same hall.”

Marcus smiled. His teeth looked sharp. “Well, Raven, it’s nice to meet you.”

Raven murmured something polite, still moving. She stared straight ahead as much as possible. Marcus strode along easily, legs effortlessly carrying him over snow and ice. He drew her into a conversation that meandered along several topics. She found it pleasant until he brought up Elise and her party.

“So,” he began, fishing out another cigarette, “I’m sorry about the bathroom thing.”

Raven looked at the buildings across the Commons. “Don’t worry about it.”

Marcus took a drag.

“Cool.” He let out a stream of smoke. “Y’know, what you’re wearing now is nice and all, but I think you looked better in blue. Really _you_ _,_ dig?”

Raven sucked in breath. “The dress with the stripes is one of my nicer things.” Her evasion sounded lame even to her.

Marcus stopped in front of her, forcing her to pull up barely six inches from his face. He regarded her with his head cocked to one side, hands in his pockets, relaxed but alert. Raven took a step back.

“I can smell lies, you know,” he told her quietly, nostrils flaring briefly. “Lies, fear... attraction...” he looked her up and down, “and the difference between human and...not.” He slid the sunglasses down far enough to regard her with golden-brown eyes. “Don’t worry. It really does take one to know one.”

Raven stood frozen to the spot, her pulse racing. She glanced all around, seeing the people around them wrapped in their own affairs and out of earshot. She looked back to Marcus and his piercing gaze.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She swallowed on a dry throat.

Marcus pushed the glasses back into place, grinning wide and dangerous. Raven was almost ready to run when he pulled a bright yellow, folded paper out of his pocket and curled her fingers around it.

“You can join us, or not,” his hands were back in his pockets. “If you want to see more, meet me at the train station, six pm Friday. We’re going to Manhattan.”

“Uh...” Raven looked down at the paper, trying to unfold it with clumsy gloved hands. When she looked up again to ask what exactly she would see, she saw Marcus loping away, already thirty yards down the path. She frowned, shrugged, and returned to the paper. It carried three lines of text and nothing else:

**COME HANG WITH COOL FOLKS**

**YOUR SKIN, SHAPE, OR ABILITIES ARE NO LIMIT HERE**

**YOU ARE NOT ALONE**

Surreptitiously, Raven glanced around her, slipped the paper into her coat pocket, and began walking back to Radcliffe. A smile bloomed on her face as she crossed the street. With a spring in her step, she tossed her hair back and laughed into the cold.

*** 

“Is it a club?” Raven fidgeted in her seat across from Marcus. New York was sliding by outside the Amtrak window.

“I told you, I can’t talk about it.” His arms were crossed across his chest and his head rested on the back of the seat. Even on the train, he wore the sunglasses.

Raven rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Fine. But I’m going to kick your ass if I spend a six-hour round trip on something square.”

Marcus smiled. Raven wondered if he ever cut himself on his own teeth. “You won’t be disappointed.”

Raven tried not to squirm as they pulled, slowly, into the Christopher Street station. Not knowing their destination was turning her stomach into knots. When Marcus finally led her to the streets of Greenwich Village, it was all she could do not to run away or demand that Marcus get her wherever they were going faster.

A voice in her head--which sounded a lot like Charles--told her that it was stupidly dangerous to go to the Village with a man she barely knew to a place she didn’t know. It had been telling her this since she’d run into Marcus at the park.

Another voice told her that there weren’t really more mutants to meet in New York. Marcus claimed extraordinary abilities, but had yet to demonstrate them. It had taken decades for her and Charles to meet one other mutant, and she suspected that it would take even longer to find enough for a gathering place.

If she were honest with herself, she was terrified. She also knew that if she didn’t go through with it, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

Marcus guided her past a dozen dive bars. It was clearly a twilight world; the people who came in and out of the bars were the sort that wouldn’t be served anywhere else. Raven tried to look like she wasn’t new to seeing men kissing each other, or mixed race couples, or men wearing strangely revealing leather clothes. The women wrapped around each other made heat rise under her skin, and she tried not to look at them at all.

Marcus finally led her to a staircase shoved between two other doors. As he descended, he turned, lowered his glasses, and winked at her.

“We’re here.” He opened the door and ushered her through. On the other side was a narrow hallway, filled with a muffled rock song and blocked by huge bruiser with tattooed biceps. Marcus nodded at him and then at Raven, tapping the side of his nose. The big man nodded, then spoke in a surprisingly smooth voice.

“Did you tell anyone where you were going tonight?”

Raven leaned back from the man but refused to move and looked him squarely in the eye. She felt Marcus staring at her. “I told my friends I was going to see a show on Broadway. They’ll miss me if I’m gone, but they don’t know why I’m here.”

The big man looked at Marcus, who nodded. “She’s telling the truth.” Raven looked back and forth between the two men. Her hope grew; Marcus and the whole trip started to look like they might actually be what he said they were.

“Good.” The bouncer regarded her again. “What you see here, who you meet, everything is secret. Not even others like us; you know someone, you send them to Marcus first. _Capiche_?”

Raven nodded. “Got it.”

The bouncer handed Raven a little wooden disk on a string. It had an apple carved into one side, an island on the other. “Wear this until you leave. Welcome to Avalon.” Looping the token around her wrist as a bracelet, Raven followed Marcus down the hallway and into an open room.

The music intensified. Dim blue and purple lights were everywhere, giving the place a otherworldly feel. An extensive bar lined the far wall. Small tables dotted the room except for an open area, directly in front of huge speakers, full of dancers. Sofas lined any free walls. It was all fairly normal for a bar and Raven’s heart sank into disappointment. She was getting ready to yell at Marcus when her eyes adjusted and she got a better look at the patrons.

One man sat at his table, amusing his friends by tossing a small flame from hand to hand without an apparent source for the fire. On a sofa was a man whose skin was made of stone, talking animatedly with a woman seated next to him. On the dance floor was a girl with webbed fingers. In the far corner, a figure sat with huge feathery wings folded up behind him. One bar tender orchestrated a dance of levitating bottles that seemed to pour of their own accord, while another mixed three drinks at once with her six arms.

Raven looked back at Marcus. He had finally removed his glasses and was watching her intensely with golden eyes. “You really are...this place...is _everyone_ here...?”

Marcus laughed. “Yeah.”

“What can you do?” Raven found her caution evaporating. “Heightened senses?”

The rangy man rolled his head and shoulders, joints cracking. “Smell, sight, hearing, taste. Don’t eat my cooking. Touch seems to be pretty normal. And there’s a few other things, too. But enough about me.”

Raven realized she was smiling giddily. She turned to look at the crowd again. “ _Everyone_ here is like us?” He nodded. She covered her mouth in awe. “God, I never thought I’d see so many....”

“I told you it was something special.” He nodded toward the back of the room. “Here, come meet Angel. It’s his place. I’ll introduce you around after that.” He gestured to her clothes. “Say, why don’t you get comfortable?”

She handed him her coat and let her scales ripple the disguise away, leaving her cobalt skin under a short white dress. Marcus looked her up and down, nodding with appreciative noises. “Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Raven grinned and stepped forward. She felt a whole new swing to her walk.

Much later, as she poured herself into bed a little after sunrise, a happy sigh escaped Raven. She tossed away her coat and dress, rippled, and snuggled down into the duvet.

Charles had promised to visit her in Cambridge that spring. She couldn’t wait to bring him to Avalon.


	18. Chapter 18

**London, March 23 rd, 1963**

By the spring of his twenty-second year in business, Mr. Christopher Lambert had helped hundreds of men buy engagement rings. Most knew nothing about gems--which, he knew, was one of the things that kept him in business. Whether they knew about jewelry or not, there seemed to be universal constants, or at least common threads, among his wealthy customers. 

There were the poor sods who didn’t know what had hit them and needed as much advice in relationships as in jewelry. There were the ones who were more interested in showing off their wealth than in finding something their lady-love would enjoy. There were the ones bound by duty, whose august families made sure that their scions married well. 

And then there were the picky ones. 

Mr. Lambert kept an expression of bland helpfulness on his face by virtue of long years of practice and little else. His current customer had been in the shop for going on three  _hours_ now and showed no signs of coming anywhere close to a decision.

“Well...” the young man said, holding the latest offering up to the light, “It’s lovely, really...but it’s...I don’t know, it’s just not right for her. Could I see something else?”

Mr. Lambert counted to ten silently and wondered if the man was so infuriating in other aspects of his life. He should probably offer his condolances to the lady in question. 

“I’m afraid, Mr. Xavier, that you have seen all our white diamond rings. We would be happy to design a different one for you.” He didn’t think there was any hope of the decisions necessary for bespoke design, but he had to offer.

Mr. Xavier shook his head. “No, I think it’s the stone itself....Did you say that there are other colors of diamond?” 

Mr. Lambert had not. He sighed inwardly, bracing himself for another round of Mr. Xavier examining an entire inventory. “Yes, sir. There are a variety of colors. May I show you some samples?” 

“Yes, that would be splendid.”

Mr. Lambert gladly left the young man to putter about the showroom. The jeweler removed the case of colored diamond samples from it’s place on a shelf in the workshop. He sat at the workbench, running his hands over his tools. There was comfort in their solidity. He held his old brass loupe in one palm, running his thumb around the metal casing. Opening the sample case, he held each stone in turn up to the magnifier, polishing off any stray fingerprints before returning them to the case. He returned to the showroom more relaxed. 

“Here we are, Mr. Xavier.” As he opened the case, he was pleasantly surprised. The young man’s eyes scanned the selection, bypassing the usually-favored pink and yellow stones,  and fixed on a more subtle choice.

“This dark brownish greenish one is a diamond?”

“Yes, sir. All the stones in this case are diamond; they come in many colors. That’s called a chameleon diamond. It changes color with variations in temperature or light.”

“May I?” Mr. Xavier picked up the gem at Mr. Lambert’s nod, holding it up to the light, then walking across the show room to hold it in a shadow. He came back smiling.

“This is quite extraordinary, Mr. Lambert. It’s perfect, just the color of her eyes.”

Mr. Lambert nodded, a half-smile on his lips. If painfully choosy, the young man was also one of the completely smitten. 

After that, it was only the work of twenty minutes for Mr. Xavier to choose a particular chameleon diamond (radiant cut, 0.65 carat), the metal for the ring (platinum), and the band design (gradual increase in thickness to the post setting, decorative filigree work around the stone). The order was placed and paid for up front. As he was handing his customer the receipt, the young man’s face got that vaguely-terrified look Mr. Lambert had seen on so many men. The jeweler smiled with only minimal  _schadenfreude_ .

“She’s going to love it, Mr. Xavier. It’s a truly special gift.” He found himself meaning it.

The young man puffed a breath out and smiled sheepishly at the jeweler. “I can only hope she likes me as much as your work. Thank you for all your help, Mr. Lambert.”

The older man nodded, and smiled his customer out the door. He turned back to his shop, collecting all the rings, stones, and design books he’d had to get out for the exacting Mr. Xavier. As he tidied, Mr. Lambert whistled to himself. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Oxford, May 6, 1963**

In the small circle of people who knew her well, and the larger circle who knew her slightly, it was a commonplace bit of knowledge that Erika Lehnsherr bought the morning _Daily Telegraph_ , the _Times_ and the _Guardian_. Every day, like clockwork, she would stop by a newsstand and pick up the papers - on her way in to work, usually, unless one of the papers was running a late edition. Most of them considered it a quirk or an affectation, and a few put it down to a desire to be well informed about her adopted country and the events of the world. The handful who knew her very well indeed recognized it for what it was - self protection. Her parents had died without ever truly understanding the reason or seeing what was coming, and Erika had no intention of allowing herself to be ground under the wheels of history a second time. She took the time out of each day to dissect all three papers carefully, from front to back, with the same keen-eyed discipline she applied to her own experiments. When the news from Birmingham had begun to filter into the back pages, Charles had taken notice and she began - quietly, but methodically - to save those pages of the paper for him to read in the evenings after dinner. When Martin Luther King had been arrested in April, his letter from the Birmingham Jail reported in the press, he had taken the paper to the small alcove by the window in his bedroom and stayed there pouring over it until the small hours of the morning. She had let him be. Dr. King was a brave man and eloquent, but she had seen brave men who chose to place themselves unarmed in the path of history ground under before and she did not expect any other result in Birmingham.

When he read how the fire hoses had ripped the clothes from young men and thrown girls over the tops of cars on May 3rd, when the police had set the dogs loose on the protestors, she had seen tears in his eyes. She ought to have used the moment, driven it home to him, but she hadn’t found the strength for it. They had spent that night in his bed, his cheek pressed to the silk of her blouse while his tears soaked through onto her skin.

She had not been home to her own bed since. When she woke in the mornings, usually before dawn, she would walk the nearly empty streets for the two miles to her laboratory with the papers tucked under her arm and sit in the clean, sterile space buried in the earth to read about the swelling jails and the seething cauldron of pent-up anger in the streets, the only sign of her response the pale stillness of her expression and the thin, compressed line of her mouth. She threw herself into her work, found herself finished by early evening, and for the last two nights had been home before Charles. The papers, she left spread on the dining room table for him while she lost herself in the mundane business of cooking the evening meal. The domesticity of it might have bothered her, if she had been able to spare that sort of attention for what seemed less than a trifle now.

On the morning of May 6th, he found her sitting at the dining room table with a half-cold glass of tea and the papers spread out in front of her. Her hat and coat lay on one of the chairs, carelessly discarded, and her eyes were fixed on the pages in front of her as her long fingers shifted and turned them - as if they were puzzle pieces to which she was trying to assign a shape. His first thought was that she must have taken the day off from work, his second that it was more likely that the sun had somehow risen ahead of schedule and the papers been carried to their door by some well-meaning goblin. He did not have time for the third, because her eyes lifted from the pages in front of her and fixed him with such singular intensity that it wiped everything else cleanly out of his head.

“Charles,” she said, “sit down.”

He frowned, feeling the timbre of her mind as he sat down. The rumble made him think of armed convoys thundering across city streets. His own thoughts dashed off in a half-dozen directions at once, speculations knotting his stomach and tightening his jaw.

Erika slid a section of the _Telegraph_ over to him, pointing at a small headline on page four. “Look.” Her voice was iron. Charles’ stomach dropped into his shoes as he read.

 

> Incident in New York
> 
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> _Manhattan, New York, USA_ On May 5th around 10 pm, Eastern Pacific time, a riot broke out in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, leaving two police officers dead. The chaos was sparked when the strange clientele of a local bar resisted arrest during a legal police raid. According to Sargent Albert Cuomo, law enforcement had expected to serve citations and make arrests for the violation of numerous decency laws--a common enough occurrence in that neighborhood. However, onlookers, police, and experts alike are stunned after the discovery that the bar Avalon catered not to the usual misfits but to astounding creatures of almost supernatural abilities and appearance. In the confusion of the riot, the exact number and nature of the creatures is unknown, but several captures were made, including a woman of amazing agility and strength and a beast-man covered in blue fur. Another four were pronounced dead from injuries sustained in the fighting. Authorities have yet to issue statements regarding forthcoming actions regarding either the detained or the unusual population at large.

Charles reached over to grasp Erika’s hand tightly. He dragged his other hand over his face before curling his fingers into a fist. “God.” He looked at Erika, eyes wide, aghast. Then he stood, panic rising in his throat. “Oh God, Raven...”

“New York is a large city, Charles. We don’t know that she was involved.” Erika’s voice shook subtly, but she ground the throbbing edge of her own fears under her heel and kept going. “This is where it starts. After this, there won’t be any going back to being hidden from the world - there are more of us, and now everyone is going to see it. There or not, she is going to need your strength and not your fear.”

Charles looked at her, sensing her fear held down by sheer force of will. He wanted nothing more in the world to bury himself in blissful oblivion--work, drink, Erika, if she’d let him. She wouldn’t. “I don’t want this to be the start of anything.” He knew he was pleading, knew the physicist couldn’t change the past night’s events. He stepped forward still holding her hand, embracing her where she sat. He kissed the top of her head for a long moment, holding on to the softness of the connection and gaining strength from her resolve. He sighed, willing all his fear to leave him with his breath.

“I’ll call Raven. If I can’t reach her...” his swallowed a tremor, “...no, even if I can, I’m going to call the police station, the family’s lawyers in New York, and whatever politicians I can get my hands on.” He stepped back, drawing a gentle hand across Erika’s cheek. _I need you._

“A beginning.” She turned her face subtly into his hand, nodding silent acceptance to the unspoken message, and her eyes were adamant gems. “I have already called Samuel, so I will wait. You’ll need breakfast.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, glancing at the clock and frowning. He wrestled down his screaming need to hear Raven’s voice _right that second_ and made a call in to the biology department. It was the first time he’d called in sick. Somehow he had a feeling that he’d be away much more in the days to come.

The mundane noises of Erika working in the kitchen scraped at Charles; it seemed wrong for the ordinary details of life to be in full working order while in New York there were four mutants dead, several captured, and the world calling them ‘creatures’ and worse. Still, the sounds and smells in the kitchen kept him grounded. He couldn’t go down a bottle of gin while Erika was cooking for him.

He sat at the table, phone brought over. He tried to breathe regularly as he dialed Raven’s number, chest tightening at the last rotation of the dial and the first ring in his ear.

“Ms. Ingles, this is Charles Xavier; I apologise for the hour. Some urgent family matters have come up and I’d like to speak with my sister.” He waited, twining the cord of the receiver around his fingers. It felt like eternity.

“Charles.” Raven’s voice skated over a sob. The worst of his worry began to drain out of him.

“Raven! Are you all right?”

“I’m all right, I wasn’t there.” Relief gushed through him, leaving him limp, and he sent a small amount to Erika. He heard his sister take a deep, shaking breath. “I knew people who were, though.”

“Raven...”

“I’d met the people who died, and some of the ones they caught. And there are still people missing, and I don’t know whether they’re okay and I can’t find out because they swore us all to secrecy...god, Charles...” She was truly crying now, Charles could hear, but her words were still clear. “Everything went to shit so fast.”

Charles sat, compressing his distress so he could stay useful. The whole ordeal was becoming very real and very personal far too fast.

“Raven, love,” he offered, “I’m so glad you’re all right. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.” Raven sniffled, breathing hard to slow her sobs. “I’m afraid I do know what Erika might do,” he joked with a half-smile. “I think everyone’s glad to avoid that situation.”

From the kitchen, the wave of Erika’s relief picked up a spike of dark certainty that he was just as glad he didn’t have to admit to feeling. Charles had the sudden, distinct thought that a police station was _full_ of dangerous metal objects - or objects that could become dangerous, in the right hands.

He wasn’t sure he knew if it was his thought or hers, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

He was rewarded, however, with a low chuckle from Raven. “Yeah, you’re right. Keeping myself safe is sort of a public service then, isn’t it?”

“Indeed.” He smiled. “And I’ll be doing my own part. I’m going to call the law firm, the police, and the mayor. I won’t let this be one-sided, Raven.” He found his voice surprisingly calm.

“That’s good, Charles...but I think it would be better if you came here.”

Charles frowned and his voice jumped back to agitated. “Raven, the school year isn’t over, and I have several lines of research open right now, and--”

“Bullshit.” Her voice, still ragged around the edges, burned fiercely. “We need you more than Oxford does. And we need you in your full capacities. Over the phone, you’re just another rich guy.”

“You’d be surprised how much can be done over the phone.” He fisted a hand in his hair, mussing it minutes after combing.

“You know I’m right. Why don’t you want to help?” The fierceness was turning to anger.

“Of course I want to help! I just said I was going to!”

“By doing things tons of other people can do. Why won’t you use your gift?!”

Silence crackled over the connection for a long moment before Charles answered in a tight voice. “Because there are some things that simply shouldn’t be done! Do you remember how Mother was after you moved in? You remember what I did? Raven, I can’t... I can’t do that again.”

There was another pause. Raven took a deep breath. “Nobody’s asking you to do something like that. There are things you don’t mind doing that would help--you can gather information, get people to like you--”

“Where does it end? Sometimes I don’t even know myself, Raven. Can you find that place?” He shook his head. “I love you. I’m going to make some calls. Good night.” He hung up.

He sat and glared at the receiver until Erika emerged from the kitchen.

She set the plate of hot eggs and sausages down in front of him, the neat tin of biscuits beside it, and then leaned back against the wall and looked down at him with eyes that could have given stone lessons in being unreadable. “She’s not wrong, Charles. Assuming, of course, that she’s asking you to put your talents to use for the cause - but that is what she’s asking you, isn’t it?”

He tore his eyes away and ate a few bites of the meal before replying. The food he would normally enjoy felt wrong in his mouth. He looked up at Erika, eyes pained.

“Raven and I aren’t related by birth.”

“I know that, Charles.” Her lips twitched, her eyebrow arching subtly. “It was something less than completely obvious.”

He continued, unfazed by her mockery. “One night, I came down to the kitchen. I’d heard a stranger’s thoughts in the house. I found my mother rooting through the fridge, but it wasn’t actually my mother.” He chewed another bite of eggs mechanically. “It was Raven. Her parents had turned her out and she was stealing food to survive. She was seven.” Even after many years, the sorrow in his voice was evident. “I told her she’d never have to steal again. The next morning, Mother came down and saw an unfamiliar blonde girl in her house. I told her how badly Raven needed a home, and Mother said she’d take her to an orphanage. Raven started crying.” Here Charles put his fork down. “It was so amazing to have found each other, and I couldn’t bear being separated from her, so I reached into my mother’s head and... _planted_ ten year’s worth of memories. In a few minutes, she believed that she had always had two children. Later I got bureaucrats to falsify a birth certificate and school records.” It was the first time Charles had ever told anyone the story. “Mother was a different person. Our memories aren’t the whole of who we are but they’re important.” His eyes found hers, still horrified by the shadow of the memory. “It would be easy for me to make everyone the way I wanted them. I don’t want to be alone with imaginary people.”

“I don’t want to kill everyone I meet by driving steel spikes through them, Charles. That doesn’t mean I don’t practice what I can do, or that I’m not willing to use it.” She held his gaze, refusing to flinch in the face of her own clawing fear of what he could do to someone - could do to _her._ “If you live your whole life afraid of your own power, you can’t hope to be ready for what’s coming for us. For all of us. When they come for you or for Raven, it’s not going to be enough to lash out blindly. You have to be in control and willing to use what you have to protect yourself.”

Charles regarded her for a long moment, fully aware of her fear. The weight of it showed him just how brave she was, how strong. He took her hand, swallowing and nodding to himself. “Promise you’ll club me in the head if I get out of control?”

She smiled, then, but her eyes were as grim as death. “If you get out of control, Charles, I will do whatever I have to do.”

Her words felt like a clamp around his heart, terrible and comforting all the same. He stood, wrapped his arms around her waist, and kissed her softly.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You need to call your department again,” she murmured back into his mouth, her arms tight around his shoulders, and he could feel the hard muscle of her body through the wool and silk of her clothing. “We are going to America, and they will need to find a replacement for at least two weeks.”

Charles felt himself smiling despite his unease; Erika hadn’t even mentioned staying in England. He hugged her fiercely. He wasn’t sure who was following whom, but either way, they would be together. “Right. Shall I book the tickets?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that part in the movie when kid Charles assures Raven that she can end her life of crime? When I first saw that I thought, "He's awfully certain about that, how does he know his parents will go along?" The answer provided itself. Charles is terrifying; don't let anyone tell you different.


	20. Part Three - Catalysts

**New York, May 9, 1963**

Arriving in New York had, on the whole, been a rather nerve-straining experience. Erika, as it turned out, had never flown before - something she had neglected to mention until they were in the air and her nerves had begun rattling the silverware in front of them. Charles had felt a little guilty about actively putting pressure on her emotions to calm her, but despite a certain irritation with the high-handedness of it she had agreed that it was probably best not to rattle the airplane apart around them with her tension. Once they had settled that, it had become a surprisingly intimate experience - feeling her wonder each time she glanced out the window, the subtle surge of terror in the back of her brain that he spilled away as though rubbing tension from a muscle. It should have frightened him, to exercise that kind of direct control over someone for hours at a time, but while they were still in the air, he wouldn’t let himself think about what it meant to change her, even temporarily.

Somewhere just past Greenland it finally sank in that - at least for now, in this moment - she trusted him enough to let him in. He allowed himself a quiet moment of contentment before he put away his desire to be worthy of that trust and his fear that he wasn’t. Still his control was imperfect; the best he could do now was to make his feelings very quiet and keep them locked away from anyone else. It would be a long time, if ever, before he commanded his own emotions as well as he could shape everyone else’s.

She had touched his hand when she stood to debark, and there had been such a maternally chiding look in her eyes that he’d been sure she’d tasted his fear and was reproving him for it. He’d felt her all the way to the taxi, not quite able to fully take his mind from hers after so much contact, and her fond exasperation had mingled with a certain impatience to be out of the dense-packed tightness of the airport like a sort of stinging, sweet-smelling smoke in his head. It had lasted all the way through Brooklyn and Queens, her restlessness singing through the steel frame of the car in a subtle vibration he could taste in her head, until they’d passed through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and came out from under the East River up onto 39th Street. Then the vibration stopped as suddenly and sharply as her expelled breath as she looked out through the window of the cab and saw the spires of Manhattan looming over them. He tensed, ready to smother another rush of fear, but what poured over him like a tsumani was wonder - pure, rapturous, disbelieving wonder that such a place could really exist. That all the stories about New York, where the city reached up to kiss the sky, could really be true. Erika Lehnsherr, as hard a woman as he had ever known in his life, clasped his hand like a child and stared up at what most of the world would have called simply The City with wide eyes.

Charles traced small circles on the back of Erika’s hand with his thumb and stared unabashedly at her. He made his mind as still and quiet as he could, unwilling to interrupt her awe as it pulsed over him warmly and added to his own joy. It was a beautiful soap bubble of a moment.

“Charles,” she said somewhere east of Times Square in a voice that trembled subtly, “you are spending more time looking at me than at the city.”

“I’ve seen the city before.” A half-smile tugged at his lips, voice warm. “You surprise me every day.”

She actually blushed for a moment, her eyes shining, and her fingers curled in her lap as though plucking at invisible strands. “Feel with me.” It was not exactly an invitation, or exactly an order, but it was something of both.

A moment’s hesitation, and he gently reached into the hum of her mind for the second time that day. He could feel her emptying her head, focusing her attention to make the sensation she wanted him to feel clearer, and then he was inside her - the silver shimmer of her mind wrapped around his, and the sharp bright lattice of fire that spread out from her curled fingers to gleaming intersections of radiating power and _life_ that danced around the steel cores of building after building after building like some impossible harmony of symphonies - each beam an instrument, each floor a chorus, each structure a concerto unique to itself and yet reverberating the soaring theme of the city as subway trains and endless layers of pipe added their subterranean thrum. It spread out from the island like an invisible aurora borealis, echoing back from Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx and Staten Island and the distant echos of Long Beach and Jersey City and Paterson and Stamford until the brightness of it kissed the edge of the void miles above them. His breath caught and he found himself captivated, immersed for the first time in an entire sense he had never possessed.

It was like and so very unlike his own power, this sense of an unseen world. Erika’s domain operated by the laws of physics, not psychology and neurology; still, as wondrously foreign as it was to him, through her he could feel the differences between iron and steel like he could feel the differences between children and adults. He could feel how to move the metal, how to shape it, and he knew that he could use her power like using another’s arms or voice.

His control fluttered and their shared perceptions buzzed incoherently for a moment. He breathed deep, focusing on the feel of Erika’s mind and the metal skeleton of the city. As the taxi drove through the streets Charles found he could navigate with his eyes closed, counting off blocks and feeling the subway tunnels under the surface. He had vaguely known how skyscrapers were built, how subways worked, even in the basic composition of windows and awnings. Through Erika’s eyes he felt metal in almost everything: the buildings, the skins and inner workings of cars, the tiny constellations of watches, jewelry, clothing fasteners and dental fillings in people, and even the grates over the roots of trees.

They breathed out together, her mind still wrapped around him like a lover’s embrace, and her whisper was as intimate as a kiss. “It’s a beautiful city, Charles.”

“Yes,” he breathed. “Thank you.”

They rode the rest of the the way to their hotel in silence, wrapped in light only they could see, and her fingers stayed wound with his the entire way.


	21. Chapter 21

 The late afternoon foot traffic on a Thursday night in Greenwich Village was thicker than Erika had grown used to in Oxford, and she shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the long coat she’d added to her usual suit and skirt to brush her fingers across the comforting weight of metal there. Charles had left early that morning, determined to make a start on his quixotic attempt at talking sense into the government of the great city of New York, and she had let him go without more than a silent sigh at his boyish optimism. Part of her would have wished to spare him the disappointment, but she knew better. Disappointment was part of life, and he would have to get used to it just like everyone else.

Raven, on the other hand, concerned her. The girl had been relieved to see them on their arrival the night before, practically throwing herself into Erika’s arms, but there was something more than fear and anger in her eyes when she spoke about the raid - about the confusion in the mutant community, such as it was, and the terrible fact that it was impossible to tell precisely how many had been arrested five days ago, how many injured, how many driven into hiding. How many had disappeared. The code of anonymity had held, which was a saving grace and a curse all at once. They had chewed it over as best they could, decided that there was nothing to be gained by not waiting until morning, and retired to their three separate beds.

Erika had been less than completely surprised when the door to her room had opened barely an hour after she had closed it.

Raven had said nothing - had made clear, in every way that a face and a body could make clear, that she intended to say nothing. She had simply crawled into Erika’s bed and clung to her, tears soaking the soft fabric of Erika’s nightshirt, until exhaustion had finally stolen the world away from her. Erika had held her a while after that, then tucked the blanket over her and padded out into the living room of their suite to stare at the lights of this alien city and let her mind turn over the manifold, interlocking problems they were facing. Not the least of which, she suspected, was a young girl carrying a weight of guilt she had no business laying claim to.

The two walked on, Raven a step ahead to lead the way through the narrowing streets. Erika could see the taut line in her shoulders even through her rain coat, the tense set of her expression. She worried how Raven would cope with the days ahead; she saw a strong passion there in the younger Xavier, but one that could do great damage to the girl if she pulled it inward.

Erika felt the damaged cars when they were still a block away. There were four or five of them parked on the street, all but one lightly damaged. The last felt like it had been crushed by a wrecking ball; the hood and trunk of the vehicle were nearly untouched, but the cabin had been smashed in all the way to the tires.

Raven gasped as they came within sight of the destruction and ran up to the scene of the riot. She stopped, hands covering her mouth, and stared. The crushed car, the remnants of broken glass clustered around the damaged vehicles and the buildings flanking the stairs, and smoke stains leading to the door were a grim testament to what had happened on Sunday night.

“I should have been here,” Raven wavered, almost to herself.

Erika surveyed the scene with a grim familiarity, remembering the streets full of shattered glass and broken wares through which her family and her neighbors had wandered like dazed ghosts. It had been almost twenty-five years, but the memory was as fresh and blood-stained as it had ever been. “If you had been here, Raven, what exactly would you have done?” It surprised her, really, that her voice came out in a reasonable murmur rather than as a scream of twisting, tearing metal. Perhaps Charles was wearing off on her.

Raven turned a stricken face to the other woman. “I don’t know--look like someone important enough to stop the raid? Distracted the police somehow? Gotten big and muscular? I just--something. I could have done _something_.”

“What you could have done, Raven, was take a beating or get yourself arrested - at best. At worst, you would have attracted the attention of someone who would recognize you needed help and found yourself responsible for _them_ receiving a beating or being arrested.” Erika reached out and took the younger woman by both shoulders, shaking her firmly. “The first rule of survival is to take care of yourself first, because until you can do that you’ll be a burden on others who need all their wits to take care of themselves. You have the ability - the _capacity_ \- to do what needs to be done to protect yourself, to protect others, but you don’t know how. You aren’t ready to act, or sure of how you’d follow through afterward. Right now, hiding - or not being there at all - is the best that you could have done.”

Raven stood glaring at the other woman, hands clamped down on Erika’s wrists, breath coming fast. She felt her fingernails grow into pointed claws pressing into Erika’s skin, fury trembling through her. “I am _done_ with hiding.” For a long moment, the rage held her up, and then her claws retracted and she threw herself into Erika’s arms, nearly sobbing into her shoulder.

Erika caught her and held her, feeling the delicate heat of blood on her wrists and ignoring it as she wound her strength around the girl. “Good.” The word came out a rough, breathless whisper, but there was no mistaking the approval or the strength in it. “You shouldn’t have to hide, Raven, but you do need to be ready to protect yourself. I can teach you that, if that’s what you want.” Her voice caught on memory, but she managed a ghost of a smile. “I’ve made something of a study of the matter, these last twenty years.”

A sobbing laugh shook Raven, and she turned her face to Erika’s throat, murmuring. “Yes, teach me.” Her lips pressed to Erika’s pulse and she pulled the embrace even tighter. “So they can’t make us disappear any more.”

 _Not again, Raven. Not my people - never again._ Erika held her fiercely, lips pressing to the softness of the girl’s temple, she breathed out carefully before she spoke to keep her voice from shaking. Raven wouldn’t have understood, and she couldn’t have explained. “We’ll start tonight, Raven, and I’ll teach you everything I know. It will take time and practice, and it will not be comfortable, but when we are finished...” she could not manage a lie, but she bared her teeth in a smile around the harsher truth. “When we are finished, if they come for you, you will make them pay for it.”

A bloody anticipation lit Raven’s eyes. “Damn straight.”

She sighed, scrubbing her face, smoothing her hair. Then her eyes dropped to Erika’s wrists. She winced. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I am not exactly unfamiliar with the sight of my own blood.” Erika took a handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it to the pinprick scratches until the bleeding stopped, then did the same to the other wrist with no more interest than a butcher might have shown a pound of lamb. “Still, it might be best to save your temper for those who deserve it. Rage is a resource, Raven, like food or water. Husband it. Use it.”

Raven nodded like she was taking an order and she unconsciously stood straighter. Eyes darting up and down the street, she saw only the usual inhabitants of the neighborhood. She nodded at the blackened door to the club. “Let’s go in, see what we find.” Erika gave a subtle sign of agreement, the merest flick of her eyes, and then crossed the street between the battered cars and went down the stairs through the door of Avalon with the brisk certainty of a woman who knew exactly where she was going. Which, after a fashion, she did - the trail of charred pain and battered metal led straight through the narrow hallway into the bar proper, and she let herself through the locks on both doors with a subtle wave of her hand as she followed it in. The big central room was full of broken furniture and burned wiring, the metal of the bar itself horribly deformed as if by a crushing blow, and stacks of fresh building supplies were scattered about the room as through they had been left there on delivery and not disturbed since. It was, in short, a ruin. Erika took in all of that with a glance, barely blinking - her attention was reserved for the gorgeous man holding diminished court at one end of the damaged bar, a glass in one hand and the other wrapped around the waist of a youth whose face was curled into the pale white softness of the man’s broad, feathered wings as though to hide from the world in them. He looked like a sorrowing angel mourning in debauchery, but he had the eyes of the room - that made him someone to watch.

Raven’s eyes widened in pain as she took in the destruction. It was hard not to think about everything that had been--this lump of char had been Ellen’s favorite sofa, that pile of glass shards had been Benny’s stupid beloved mirrorball, those upended tables had been where she’d met Hank and Lewis. More disturbing were the dark stains, one on the wall by the door, another on the floor just in front of the bar. Raven swallowed, determined not to shatter. She took Erika’s hand and stepped towards the group in the corner.

“Hello, Warren, everybody, sorry to interrupt. This is Erika. She’s one of us.” She rippled into blue as she said it. Glancing at the bouncer, she swallowed. "I couldn't find Marcus."

A tight murmur went around the room, an instant tang of suspicion, and Raven instinctively braced herself for the lash of Erika’s anger. It didn’t come. “You’re cautious - that’s good.” Erika stepped past Raven and looked over the small gathering, her eyes a cold dark jade that made her seem like someone else. Someone older, maybe, or just harder. “Even if you know her, you don’t know me, and some of you have noticed my clothes and the weight in my pockets, which has you wondering if I’m police or a reporter or something worse. I could have threatened her, after all, or paid her to bring me here. Unlikely, but possible.” She took her hands out of her pockets and spread them in the air, showing her empty fingers. “As I said, your caution is commendable. May I suggest that everyone remain still for a few moments? So I can, as they say, present my bona fides.”

A long moan ran through the room, snapping every eye away from Erika toward the bar, and the metal cried out in something very like pain as it unfolded and uncrumpled itself until the smooth arc of the bar was unblemished and mathematically precise - far more than it had been when it was installed. Objects began to rise from the floor or drift from the walls, moving into place on invisible hands - burnt wiring removing and stripping itself, winding together with fresh wires to form complete lines that vanished back into the walls to settle into place; chairs and tables, reshaping themselves or being hammered into place with fresh brackets and nails; bracket-mounted boards that latched themselves to the wall and were bolted into place by thick steel bolts that drilled their own way into the walls. Erika’s skin dampened with effort, her eyes half-closed in concentration as she manipulated hundreds of objects simultaneously - many of them in complex tasks she had never before attempted using her abilities - until at last she let out a breath and allowed her hands to drop. The room was a far cry from pristine, its plaster ceiling still stained with smoke, but it was no longer a ruin.

She opened her eyes. Smiled. “I trust that will be sufficient, gentlemen and ladies?”

“Mother of God.” The blond woman who’d been hovering her glass a few inches over her hand nearly dropped it all over the floor, and she looked from the mostly-repaired walls to Erika and back again before resting her fingers against the bar shakily. “If I hadn’t just seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

A huge man with dark, curly hair stood, planting himself and his gigantic tattooed biceps between Erika and the telekinetic. “Why are you here?” Raven unconsciously took a step to the side, nervous at the coiled readiness in Emilio’s smooth dark voice. Most of the other mutants were warily expectant. One man, Lewis, who would have been handsome if not for the haggardness in his face, simply stared.

“Four of our people are dead, and more are missing. I’m here to save as many of the second as I can.” Erika kept her hands spread in the air, clearly visible. Only at her words did a spark of life glimmer in the haggard man’s eyes, though still he waited and watched in silence.

“That’s... a tall order.” The winged man - Warren, apparently - let his eyes sweep over the room and whistled in spite of himself. “I have a feeling that I don’t want to know how you plan to do that, but I can probably ask what you’d like me to do to help - I doubt that’s going to get me in any more trouble than I’m already in.”

Erika studied him for a moment, her eyes piercing. _A man to trust? If he’s going to buckle, that would cost... but he’s endured this, and he’s still offering to help. Worth the risk._ “You get all kinds here - all sorts of talents. If you don’t know who can do what, people you already know do. I want the best finder, the best tracker, you know. Any talent that could help, that can track or find people or things - I want to talk to that person. As best you can, I want to know who’s missing. Above all, I want it done quickly and quietly. Everything else...” her lips narrowed in a sharp smile. “Everything else, you can leave up to me.”

“Seven of us are in police custody,” Emilio said, uncrossing his arms. “Warren sent them his lawyers, so we at least know how they are. There are four more who we know are missing.”

Raven swallowed hard. “Marcus?”

Lewis grimaced and held out a hand to the blue woman. His deep voice was ragged around the edges. “Yeah, hon. We’re almost sure they got Marcus - Philips saw him get pulled away, and nobody’s seen him since.”

Raven bit back an angry sob, taking his hand. Something in his eyes made her ask. “Hank?”

Lewis’s whole body turned to stone, his voice to gravel. “Yes.”

The young man turned compassionate eyes of a startlingly bright green to the group and began to hum softly, infusing the sound with a sense of hope. Emilio lowered a surprisingly gentle hand to Lewis’ shoulder. The bouncer addressed Raven and Erika both. “Hank and Marcus, for sure. We think maybe Salvatore, Lighter, Priest or Darwin - they were here that night and nobody’s seen them, but maybe that means they just hid themselves so far down that nobody’s been able to find them.”

Erika nodded once, sharply, her hands working slowly but with enough force that the joints audibly crackled. “You have ways of finding people - ways of checking on them. No records?”

“No records.” Warren met her eyes, blue gaze unreadable but somehow searching. “Nothing the police could take.”

“Good man.” Erika’s smile was back, clean and crisp as a razor. “Keep looking - quietly - and get me what I asked for. Descriptions of the missing, too, if you can. I want to know who I’m looking for.” There was a driving certainty in her voice that seemed to animate the room, catching that ember of warm relief the boy had breathed into them and harnessing it into energy. “I’ll be here again in two days, then again on Monday. If you have something for me, don’t write it down. Remember it.” She touched her temple lightly. “Safer than paper.”

The blond spoke up again, her voice trembling but urgent. “How do we know we can trust you?”

“You don’t,” Erika said, and then softened it with a subtle spread of her hands. “All I can say is that I will do everything I can to bring our people back if you locate someone who can find them for me.”

Lewis finished his drink in one swallow, left it on the resurrected bar, and stood directly in front of Erika. It was, Raven thought, like watching a staring contest between two birds of prey. A moment more, and then Lewis grasped Erika’s hand in his own. He nodded, released her, and walked towards the door. Before he stepped out into the little hallway, he called over his shoulder. “In two days.”

Erika watched him go, then turned back to those who remained and spoke in a softer voice that was no less terrible for its quietness. “Tell me where the dead have been buried, and I will go.”

There was a long silence, and it was the boy who finally broke it. His voice had an accent, soft and exotic, that tasted of spices. “Linden Hill. They’ll be up in Linden Hill. Coroner’s still holding on to them, won’t let them go yet, but that’s where they’ll be.”

“Thank you.” Rage put hard German consonants into the words, but Erika’s sincerity was obvious. She stood without speaking for another handful of heartbeats, then went out through the doors into the street with her shoulders trembling and her head full of fire.

Raven made her hasty goodbyes, shimmered into her disguise, and jogged up the stairs after Erika. She caught up three doors down.

“You want to get them a decent burial and funeral, right?”

“Yes.”

A hard determination burned in Raven’s eyes. Part of her was worried that she would take out all her rage on the coroner, who probably only deserved some of it. If she were honest with herself, another part of her was happy to deliver disproportionate retribution. Most of all, she was just glad to finally have a mission.

“Good.” 


	22. Chapter 22

The District Attorney’s office was in an impressive building in the heart of Manhattan’s Civic Center. Everything was squared-off, simple, and severe; even the decorative latticework on the entrance was entirely at right angles. The man who ran the office was, as far as Charles and most New Yorkers were concerned, equally straight and solid. Frank “Mr. Integrity” Hogan had rooted out corruption at every level of power in the city, and he had the strength, cunning and connections to survive attacks from the numerous enemies he’d earned.

Charles smiled at the receptionist; he had smiled at all the receptionists, assistants, and secretaries of the offices he’d visited in the past four days. He always started with a smile, one perfectly calculated to charm. It was something that had become habit for him before he graduated high school, but now it felt more like a tool than a personality trait. Erika wouldn’t let him think of it as anything else.

The receptionist buzzed Hogan on the intercom and Charles settled onto an uncomfortable chair. He leaned his chin on a hand, fingers casually at his temples, and touched the DA’s mind. 

Hogan was thoroughly preoccupied with the meeting at hand--good. It was always easier to make changes when people weren’t paying attention to him. A nudge here, and Hogan’s fond memories of Brian Xavier were ready to be activated when the DA saw Charles’ face. A tiny pull there, and the man’s natural passion for justice started to fill his subconscious. The telepath made other alterations; increased potential empathy, decreased worry about the next election, even a soothing of the growl in his belly. Charles wasn’t taking any chances, this time.

The large door to Hogan’s office proper opened, and a tall man in a suit left carrying a briefcase and a coiling tension in his mind. A touch to his surface thoughts and Charles had identified him and determined that he would be of no use to his purposes. He continued to wait. 

After five minutes, the intercom on the secretary’s desk buzzed, and the woman waved Charles towards to door. He stood, straightened his tie, and strode forward broadcasting his idealism. 

A narrow-shouldered, square-faced man with a wide smile that alleviated the severity of his face, Hogan pushed up from his desk and crossed the room to take Charles’s hand in a brisk, warm grip. “Charles, boy, it’s good to see you! Last I heard, you were shipped off to England as green as grass. Professor now, isn’t it? Young, too. Your father would be proud.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hogan. I’m at Pembroke College in biology.” Charles smiled and returned the handshake at the exact pressure preferred by Hogan. “And you’ve been making quite the name for yourself, I hear. Congratulations on the  _ Dotto  _ case.”

“It was a good piece of work, if I do say so myself. Come on, sit down.” Hogan waved him to a chair, casually pleasant now that the old family bond was firmly reestablished, and crossed to the small cabinet between the office’s two broad windows. “Want a drink?”

“Scotch, please,” Charles said, fingers at his temples again. He watched as Hogan poured liquor into one tumbler, lifted the bottle over another without allowing a drop to pass, and replaced the bottle in the cabinet. He sat back down comfortably, carefully handing the empty glass to Charles. The telepath raised his tumbler in thanks. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Hogan drained most of his glass in three long swallows, then set it down on his desk and leaned back in his chair. His eyes studied Charles, cagey and shrewd, and if it was still a friendly expression it was also a guarded one.“So, I figure you didn’t come all the way over to the Center on your first trip back to the States in five years just to brush up on old times. In fact, I figure that so much that I had Adele ask around and I hear that in the last few days you’ve called or been ‘round to see the Mayor, the Police Commissioner and one of our Senators, not to mention more state legislators and judges than I can shake a stick at. Now, I’m not fond of gossip, but that strikes me as just a little strange. You want to tell me what’s got you pounding on the doors of the city, Charles?”

Charles projected an image of himself taking a slow swallow of liquor. He didn’t have to change the stone in his voice or expression as he set his briefcase on the table, opened it, and slid a well-worn copy of his thesis and the clipping from the _Telegraph_ over to Hogan.

“This,” he began, opening the book to the abstract page, “is both why I’m a professor and why I was very interested in,” he pointed at the article, “and rather concerned by these events.” He gave Hogan time to skim both pieces before continuing \- something that required a gentle mental tap to smother the man’s impatience, but was blessedly brief by comparison with several of his past visits. Hogan apparently knew how to skim a document for the key points.

“I believe that Avalon’s patrons are members of the next step in human evolution. They are both scientifically fascinating and people with rights. It is of tremendous importance that those arrested receive due process, for the sake of knowledge and justice.” He pressed firmly on Hogan’s moral compass, looking him in the eye with complete seriousness. “I came to you because so far no one--not the Mayor, not the chief of police and not even the officers who made the arrest in question--can tell me where this man,” he tapped the referent line in the article, “is being held, let alone if he has been provided legal council and when his arraignment has taken or will take place.” Charles leaned forward, his fingers ever at his temple, his awareness hovering all around Hogan, ready. Grasping a surface thought and following the threads was much easier, and less dangerous, than simply reaching blindly into a mass of memories. 

_The hell does he care? Damn Brit schools - probably a lot of pinko professors spouting about the rights of the oppressed. Still, good family, probably a good boy. Little soft-hearted, that’s all, with a head full of theory and too much scientific curiosity._ Hogan’s smile never wavered, though his exasperated fondness for Charles bit like a knife. _Five minutes in a room with one of those monsters would set him straight, but that’s not the order of the day._ Charles caught the thread of memory attached to that last thought and snagged his mental fingers around it, plunging down past conscious memory to the twirling fog of half-stored images - men in black suits with badges that read FBI and the right sort of serious intensity, the kind that put confidence into the words _don’t worry, sir, we have everything under control. We’ll take care of this quietly._ The official release of the most dangerous prisoners, the retention of the others for trial on civil disturbance and assaulting a police officer, the black vans that had picked up the half-drugged prisoners released only seconds before. A firm handshake, a smile from the sort of man who breathed authority. Plain suit, no identification - from the Army? Hogan hadn’t asked. _Don’t you worry, Mister Hogan. You’ve done your country a great service._

He was in and out in less than a second, before Hogan even became aware of the discontinuity, and the District Attorney gave Charles a reassuring smile - the kind the _right_ sort of men gave each other in confidence, to reassure them that things were well in hand. “Don’t worry about it, Charles,” he said, “everything’s being taken care of. The prisoners we picked up will get a fair trial. You know how it is with the papers - they get everything out of context. Even if there was a blue beast-man running around at the riot, which I doubt, he must have been released with the first batch of prisoners. If he’s that important to your research, maybe you ought to ask” _the freaks_ “his friends about him.”

Charles set his jaw, the cords of muscle standing out, and gripped his glass with white knuckles. Hogan’s smile stuck to his skin like rancid oil, and for the first time in years Charles wished he could somehow disinfect his mind. The betrayal cut all the more coming from a man otherwise tirelessly dedicated to justice. He knew he looked as stung as he felt.

Hogan saw and felt none of that, of course, even though Charles didn’t bother acting out the closing scene. He simply projected his fictional contrition followed by a genial conversation about unimportant matters. He gathered up his materials and let the script wind to a close, letting his image smile and shake hands while he turned and left, disgust on his face.

He hid his anger and revulsion under calm, friendly Professor Xavier all the way to Chinatown. He let the surface thoughts of the neighborhood wash over him, a distracting mess of images, emotions, and six different languages. It helped a little to wash away the feeling of Hogan’s mind, and he began to breathe easier. As he walked the narrower, market-lined streets of the neighborhood, his anger gave way to frustration, and then the frustration to weariness. It was about to sink down to despair when he pushed open the door to the Xaviers’ favorite restaurant and a cloud of delicious smells rolled over him.

Charles had promised Raven he would bring their favorite dim sum to the hotel; his sister seemed determined to introduce Erika to the city by way of her stomach. So far he was happy to watch and feel Erika’s reactions. He’d even enjoyed the indignant, visceral revulsion she’d felt toward enchiladas, and the playful slap he’d gotten for laughing. However, he was fairly certain that Erika would enjoy the dumplings, and he was glad he could bring home something good. As fruitless as his day had been otherwise, it gave him a tight little sense of accomplishment.

Since the funeral on Saturday night, accomplishment had been hard to come by.

He felt Raven first, the wash of her emotions strong enough to burn through six floors of hotel to the elevator in which he was standing with the bag of food carefully balanced on his arm - a burning, lashing impatience that danced on a sea of rage and fear he’d watched growing for most of the last week with no sign of abatement. The impatience was new, not the seething impotence he’d expected to be choking the room - this was hot-blooded and fresh, full of frustrated possibility, as though she were practically burning a hole in the floor with her pacing. Erika was subtler - a tang of mental ozone in the air, wrapped around a cold clarity that was almost invisible against the storm of Raven’s mind. If he concentrated, it was as though he could hear a thousand tiny gears clicking with metronomic regularity.

Raven might be pacing, but Erika... Erika was thinking.

Charles turned his key in the door and entered the suite without a word. Erika was sitting at the kitchen table, maps and papers spread out before her, while Raven was ricocheting around the living room.

“Charles! You’re back, thank GOD I’m tired of waiting.” She hugged him awkwardly around the food and pulled him towards the kitchen while he kept his eyes carefully on her hair. He was almost used to her nudity. “Erika was brilliant, she got all these maps so Bob could find out where Hank and the others are to within a quarter mile.”

Charles set the food down on the only clear patch of the table. “Bob?”

“Robert is a mutant - who would probably prefer you not be using his name, Raven.” Erika caught the younger woman’s eyes and held them firmly until they flared with understanding, then went on in a voice that was crisp despite an edge of distracted concentration. “The local community were able to find him for us. He seems to have some sort of limited clairvoyance - when he looks for something using a map, mental or otherwise, it presents itself to him. He was reluctant to help, but we persuaded him.” Something in the flavor of her voice suggested to Charles that he might not want to ask what exactly Erika had said to do the persuading. “All he needed was a link to one of those who were taken. Hank - the name of your blue mutant, apparently - has a boyfriend who was able to provide us with hair that was indisputably his. Our seer gave us this.” Erika’s finger rapped lightly against the map, touching a small hollow buried among the hills twenty-seven miles upstate. “It is, at least, a beginning.”

Charles studied the map and fought back the fear in his throat. “That’s a nature preserve,” he began slowly. He looked at Raven and Erika in turn, questioning. “I found some information at the DA’s office. Do you want to see it?”

Raven nodded almost instantly. Erika’s gesture of acceptance was slower, still tinged with the edge of hesitation, but when she carefully stilled her mind to allow him into it he could still taste the deep well of her trust. She might not be sure of his judgement or even of his love, but she was sure he was safe enough in her mind.

Charles took first Erika’s hand and then Raven’s. Breathing deep, he let Hogan’s memories swirl to the surface and settle into the outer layer of the women’s minds. As he did, he studied the face of the nameless man in charge. He would, Charles guessed, be important later.

He let go of Raven’s hand as she pulled back, frowning. Erika looked composed as ever, but he could feel another tone vibrating through her mind.

“Fuck.” Raven ran a blue hand through her hair.

 _“Schutzstaffel.”_ Erika breathed the word like a curse, her hands flexing slowly, but her face was an expressionless mask. “They have been taken for _experimentieren_ \- for experimentation. Study. They will be well-guarded.”

“Ex--” Raven’s voice caught and her face had drained to a paler blue. “Experiments? Oh God...” Charles didn’t have to listen to her mind for the terror and horrified, desperate disbelief to reach him. Erika was iron, armored like a tank. He was ashamed by how glad he was that none of her memories breached her walls.

“Lots of men with guns.” Charles shook his head. The three stood and sat in battered silence.

“We still have to _do_ something.” Raven’s voice wavered, but there was fire in it too. “We _can_ do something.” She looked pointedly at the others. “Who else can help them?”

Charles said nothing, clamping down on the desire to keep the two women locked safely away from danger. He cleared the table and began setting the food out, his whole body tense.

“Eat.” Raven started to protest, but Erika fixed her with a look that choked off words and went on in a voice that was as measured as it was dangerous. “Both of you, and then to bed early. We are going to have a long day tomorrow, and we’ll need our strength for it.”

Charles froze with a food carton poised above his plate, frowning at Erika. “And what are we doing tomorrow?”

She gave him her eyes, then, and they were as hard and cold as the barrels of a gun. “Tomorrow, Charles, we are going to get our people back. One way or the other.”

He slammed the carton on the table. “Did I mention the guns? And the unknown number of military-trained men? And the fact that they are clearly equipped to capture and hold mutants? They could have anything, and be able to add us to their collection the minute we step inside!”

“They aren’t ready for me, Charles.” Erika’s smile was tight and fleeting, but there was a grim certainty in it. “Unless they’ve built their entire complex without a scrap of steel or iron, which I assure you I would be able to tell long before we encountered them, they can’t be. They aren’t ready for you, either, unless they have previous experience with telepaths - something that I doubt. They certainly aren’t ready for both of us.”

Raven took the carton from Charles’ unresisting hands. “We’re not just guessing. The police were only able to take people with physical mutations--they weren’t equipped for teleporters, or clairvoyants, or people with elemental control. The fact that nobody else has disappeared since the riot shows that these mystery assholes don’t have the capacity either.”

She served herself before passing the carton to Erika. “The two of you together will be more than able to handle yourselves. And they can’t capture me if they don’t even know I am a mutant.” With that, Raven shimmered, and suddenly Charles and Erika had the displeasure of dining with the man from Hogan’s memory.

“We don’t know enough about him. You’ll need something less recognizable, but suitably military.” Erika’s lips tightened in a narrow smile. “Save him, though. He’ll be useful eventually.”

“That is also extremely unsettling. Please stop.” Charles reached for another carton of food, trying not to look at Raven but unable to stop.To his relief, the nameless face shimmered away, leaving a vaguely smug look on his sister’s face.

“I don’t like it.” Charles spoke deliberately. “But if Hank and the others aren’t in the justice system any more, it’s the only way...god, I hate this.” He poked at his dumpling with a fork. “Will you promise me that if it comes down to it you’ll choose your own safety and freedom over theirs?”

“I’m no martyr, Charles, but that’s not a promise any soldier can make.” Erika pulled one of the forks off the table into her hand with a flick of her thoughts, without taking her eyes off of his face. “All of us are going to survive as long as we can, and save as many of our people as we can. That’s the only sane thing to do.” She caught the flash of protest in his expression, and beat him to it. “We can’t avoid being soldiers, Charles - not now. Birth drafted us. The best we can do is hope not to spend our entire lives that way.”

He held her eyes for a long moment. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“It is rarely pleasant to hurt people, Charles,” she whispered softly. “It is also sometimes the most necessary thing in the world. Now, eat up. We have ugly work to be about, come morning.”

Raven had the good sense to say nothing, and they passed the rest of the meal in silence. That night, for the first time since they had arrived at the hotel, Erika invited Charles into her room. They slept, after a long intimate silence, wound so tightly together that when he woke in the morning he found that she had left bruises on his shoulders with her fingertips.

In a strange way, it comforted him.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Graphic depictions of violence

Schuster’s Hollow, as it turned out, was larger than it looked on the map. A deep amphitheater of earth carved out between the four broad hills that surrounded it, a single narrow road ran down into it like a slender strip of dark stone spooled out from a hidden castle. Erika had passed the turn-off and driven on for a quarter of a mile before concealing the car on a dusky turn-off and starting up the long slope of one of the wooded hills they had just driven across, her fedora worn low over her eyes and her coat snapping around her in the evening light. Her mind, when Charles touched it, was a cold clockwork already mapping the distant sparks and gleams of metal and life in the distant hollow. There were far too many of both for it to be anything innocent.

In the center of the amphitheater was a guard station, masquerading as a small groundwater monitoring outpost, the only visible part of the facility. As they approached, Charles found four guards on duty. By the time he, Erika and Raven reached the door, he had used one man to shut off the accessible cameras and security and frozen all four at their posts. He let himself into the station with much more calm than he felt. The immobile guards gave the station the illusion of being a frozen moment in time. Holding the men that way made Charles feel like he was holding the breath of the room.

“That’s very convenient, Charles, but seriously weird.” Raven waved a hand in front of the unresponsive face of the nearest man before stripping him of his badge and keys. She shimmered into a doppelganger of the him, looted the pockets of the other guards, and turned to her companions, speaking in a blandly pleasant male voice. “Did I miss anything?”

Charles glanced at her and shook his head. He touched two fingers to the temples of the three seated men in turn. They slumped down in their chairs, eyes fluttering shut, breath deepening, looking for all the world like they were in a natural deep sleep. After easing the standing guard to the floor, Charles closed his eyes, fingers at his own temples.

“There’s a lot of people down there,” he said after a moment. “And deep. I can’t reach all of them from here. I can’t even feel the prisoners.”

“I can feel the cells.” Erika’s voice was hard metal, and her eyes were half-closed as her fingers traced the air. “Heavy boxes of metal, gated and electrically wired. I’m bringing the elevator to us now.”

The door the elevator was as bland as the rest of the guard station, but the interior was nothing but lights on steel. As they descended, Charles reached out as far as he could go, feeling the hundreds of minds climb up to him the lower they got. Soon there were minds surrounding them in all directions, and then he found the mutants.

“There, farther down, I can feel them.” _Friends are coming to free you,_ he projected to them. _This is not a trick. I am a telepath. This is real. Do not be afraid._ As he did he learned who they each were. “Hank, Darwin, Marcus...” His expression of concentration turned bloodless. “Oh god, they have children in here.”

“Of course they do.” Erika’s skin was pale, but her eyes gleamed with fire. “They always do. Twenty seconds, Charles - be ready for them.”

The telepath swallowed and nodded grimly. Reaching out again, this time he held on to all the minds he felt, save the mutants’. He pulled them gently down into themselves, and half the facility sank down to the floor, unconscious. Another pull, and half the remaining staff slept. He froze the other quarter, the more resistant ones, dropping them one at a time. “That should do it,” he said distantly.

Erika’s mind was already lashing through the facility like a chain of living lightning, jumping from one camera or security gate to the next, and when the elevator doors thumped open the clinical white room in front of them was a sea of flickering halogen lights and twisting shadows as security systems gutted themselves. She pushed past the other two, leading the way into the hallway, and the ghastly half-light cast her in terribly stark relief as she began the slow walk toward the cells that held the small cluster of lives she’d come to save. Doors peeled open in front of her, cracking under the weight of her rage, and if she was trembling and lightly sheathed with sweat by the time they came to the cells then it seemed to mean nothing to her.

She lifted her hands, drew them closed, and buried a scream of effort in her throat as the massively reinforced steel lost charge and tore loose from its moorings in a shattering hail of broken fragments that buried themselves in the distant ceiling overhead. The sudden weight of her exhaustion nearly took her off her feet, but she braced herself against the wall and kept from falling. Pride demanded that much, at least.

Raven glanced at the sparking remains of the security cameras, shimmered to blue, and picked her way into a cell. She stopped when there was still space between her and the occupant. He was curled into a far corner, arms protecting his head. As he lowered them Raven saw he was barefoot and wearing institutional grey pajamas. His dark hair was dirty and matted with dried blood. The blue woman winced and called out gently.

“Marcus? It’s me, Raven. Can you walk?” Golden eyes squinted out at her. He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring.

“Yeah, they only got my arm.” He waved a plaster cast at her as he stood, clapping her on the shoulder with his good hand and grinning with a split lip. “You got some real moxie coming down her, Blue.” He stopped in front of Erika, sniffing deeply before looking out into the hallways. He gave a low whistle. “Damn. I’m glad you’re on my side.” Erika said nothing, though she did give him a wry smile.

While Raven was extracting Marcus, Charles approached the cell at the farthest end. He crouched down and called out.

“Heather. My name is Charles. I’m the one who told you we were coming.” He held out a hand, waiting.

A lean, dark-skinned girl with bruises across her temples who couldn’t have been more than twelve stepped out from the broken door frame and touched Charles’s hand carefully, her eyes wide and trembling. She looked up and down the hall, back at at him, and managed a shy smile. “We’re leaving now?”

Charles gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yes, love, as soon as we get everyone ready.” He stood and made his way to the next cell where an older girl with shock-white hair was picking her way into the hallway and glancing nervously at the destruction. She glanced at Charles and fixed dark eyes at Erika. “Where are you taking us?”

Erika knelt down and brushed a hand across the girl’s hair, finding something resembling reassurance to put into her voice. “Somewhere safe. Away from here.” The girl seemed to consider than a moment, then pressed herself against Erika’s hand as though she might start clinging to it at any moment.

“Away would be better.” A slender young boy a couple of years younger than the one holding on to Erika ease himself out from behind a low bunk, his eyes invisible behind a pair of ruby-tinted glasses, and took a few cautious steps toward Erika. “We’re leaving now?”

“Yes.” She met his eyes, though she couldn’t see them, and there was a promise in her voice she hadn’t intended but couldn’t help. “We’re leaving now. All of us.”

“Hell yes.” A tall black man ducked out of his cell, pointing over his shoulder at a hulking blue shape behind him. “Hope you brought a bus.”

Raven smiled. “Darwin! Hank!” She hugged each in turn. “Was there anyone else?”

Darwin shook his head gravely. “Nobody else who’s alive now.”

Erika’s lips compressed into a dangerous line, and she dragged in a slow breath as she slowly straightened to her feet. “Did they take the body?”

“For dissection, I believe. Yes.” The blue-furred shadow eased out into the corridor, favoring a long right leg and flexing its hands in a way that suggested “Hank” might like to bury his claws into something at the first opportunity. “They took her away three days ago.”

“Then it’s time to leave. Charles, bring the children...” Erika never finished her sentence. Hank’s nostril’s flared, eyes widening, and he twisted in place so violently that his leg gave way beneath him and spilled him to the ground. Erika’s head snapped around, eyes searching, and she pushed both the children nearest her to the ground protective as she went to one knee.

Marcus growled, an animal sound coming from deep in this chest. He threw himself forward amid the sound of tearing cloth and odd popping and stretching noises, and before he’d gone three steps his body had transformed into that of a large, shaggy, angry wolf. He darted forward and leaped onto a figure standing at the end of the hallway.

Charles, shielding the children with his body, started to panic. “I can’t touch him! I can’t even feel him!”

The hard, flat roar of a shotgun rattled the room, hurling Marcus back in a spray of blood, and Erika snarled as her attention finally focused in on the cluster of metal wrapped around their attacker and twisted. The sound of the man’s neck snapping was hideously loud, and the shotgun’s barrel followed fractions of a second later. Not _fast_ enough, some part of her screamed, but that was all she had. She swept the cell-block level for moving metal, found another cluster, and there was a single sharp scream as she ripped the gun from his hand and pumped six shots into his chest from less than six inches away. The body hit the floor with a sodden thump, followed a second later by his pistol, and everything was still again.

Raven felt like her next breath took an hour. She struggled to her feet, running to Marcus. He was a bloody heap of fur slowly melting back into the shape of a man. Dark blood welled in a wound in his side, one Raven could tell was deep. She tore the front of the guard’s shirt off in one violent motion and pressed it to Marcus, trying to stop the bleeding. Through tear-blurred vision she watched blood continue to leak through her fingers.

He gripped Raven’s blue wrist, claws digging into her skin. Pained, golden eyes locked desperately on to hers, and a gurgling, coughing breath rolled out of his throat. Marcus held on to her arm and her gaze for another wrenching inhalation, another wet exhalation, and then he was still. As the life dimmed from his eyes, Raven heard Charles grunt as if taking a blow.

“NO!” The scream ripped through the hallway and Raven was only distantly aware that it was hers. _No no no no not dead, please live, please live, don’t die don’t go--_

Slender, strong hands took her by the shoulders. Shook her. “Raven. _Raven!_ ” Erika’s voice hit her like a slap, then again like a torrent of cold water that left her drenched with icy rage. The older woman held her hard until their eyes focused - until the world tumbled back into place around her. Erika held her there a moment longer, breathing with her, and then released her shoulders with an almost gentle push. “Hold together. We’re leaving.”

Raven closed her eyes briefly, pushing her grief down into her stomach. Taking a steadying breath, she saw the terrified children grouped between a bedraggled Charles and Hank at their end of the hallway. Darwin had his armored back to them, crouched and facing the far end of the corridor. Voice tight, she nodded to Erika.

“I’ll cover the back with Darwin. You get us back up to the parking garage.” As she spoke, she shifted into a copy of Emilio, the last words in his quiet, angry baritone.

“Are there any more assholes with guns?” Darwin asked over his shoulder.

“Not moving,” Erika answered, her eyes half-closed as the air around her crackled with distortion and electrical discharges. The helmets of the two dead men pulled free of their bodies, falling into orbit around her like the electron orbits of simple helium, and she began to walk slowly toward the elevator as a sound like distant thunder began to roll through the expansive room. Her voice was a terrible thing, like the edge of a scythe. “Let us see if I can encourage anyone who might be hiding to make themselves noticeable.”

Twenty feet away, a desk collapsed on itself and spun up toward the ceiling to bury fragments there with an audible clatter. A dozen filing cabinets, racked against the nearest wall, shrieked like banshees as metal tore and began slashing back and forth through the stored paper like some sort of mad pulping device. Lights spluttered and blazed, burning brighter or guttering out as their filaments shattered. The boy at Charles’s right made a sound that was as much wonder as fear, and the young girl clutched at his hand as her eyes went wide. The metal-plated stone under Erika’s feet trembled as she walked, her hands outstretched, and the world around them danced with chaos and spinning metal.

Hank glared at the display, ears laid back and nostrils flaring. He stepped after Erika anyway, limping and shielding the silver-haired girl with his body. She was tense, ready to bolt, but still in control of her actions, silently following and watching.

Charles followed with his fingers at his temple, the girl’s hand firmly in his and the boy just behind. The doorways and side passages slid by his eyes, his attention spent between keeping the hundreds of employees unconscious and worrying about Erika. She was a sun of rage and power, all the metal in the facility submitting to her gravity. _Something’s going to burn._ He didn’t share the thought.

They reached the elevator, the doors waiting open for them. They crowded into the small space, Hank and Charles pressed against the back wall, Erika, Raven and Darwin facing the door, the children in the center. The door and walls bowed subtly, accommodating them, and then the car hurled upward like a child’s ball - fast enough to make the subtle jolt of the stop, so much less than everyone had reflexively braced for, almost a shock. Erika flicked the doors open with a twist of her wrist, stepping out into the garage, and she kept her left hand cradled at her side as though cupping the elevator car in the palm while her right spun and danced like a conductor’s, hurling cars and trucks into broken ruins against the walls to empty the path of the heavy-built black van she’d chosen. In less than the two minutes it took her charges to reach the back of the van, every other vehicle in the garage had been reduced to so many twisted and broken parts.

Her glance was enough to pop the locks, loudly, and Charles felt the strain of effort in restraining herself to that small a change. It was as if her rage and the vast metal frame of the facility were an ascending harmony, each feeding back on the other in an ever-more-violent loop. Hank’s fur was fairly flattened by now, his sense a blaze of barely controlled fear, but he somehow found the calm to help Raven get the children into the back of the van. Darwin was already moving for the driver’s seat, as though he couldn’t wait to get at least that thin barrier of protection between himself and the storm of invisible fire in the air.

They were moving as soon as the last door slammed shut, everyone still finding their seats. On the open floor behind the front seat, Hank faced the rear of the van, bad leg stretched out flat in front of him. He kept watch through the window, taking deep breaths to calm himself, growling low in his throat. When the oldest girl looked at his hands, she saw that his claws were dug deeply into the van’s carpeting.

Charles clung to the seat in front of him as Darwin took a sharp turn. Hank’s mind was still a strange mix of lightning-quick calculations and an intense, almost subconscious wariness. Erika burned. The children were a jumble of fear, hope, relief, and excitement. Raven and Darwin kept a determined purposefulness over seething rage and grief. The people in the facility were waking up slowly, confused, and as they sped farther away, Charles let them. He thought that he was probably exhausted, although that could easily belong to someone else. Somewhere deeper were his own emotions, probably. He’d figure them out later.

“Charles,” Erika said into his thoughts in a voice that was molten iron, “let them go.”

Nodding, he relaxed his hold on the facility, letting the minds slip from him like sand from his fingers. After freeing the bulk of them his mind felt light, like it was floating in the clouds somewhere above him, while below the thoughts of everyone in the van got stronger.

After releasing the last few minds, he had only a breath of relief before Erika stoked her rage and her power to a shrieking inferno. He cried out in panic.

“Erika, wait, what are you doing?!”

She didn’t answer him - not with words - and the reflexive grasp of his mind scraped and skittered across the armor of her burning power and the single-minded fury that had blotted out everything else in the psychic space of the suddenly tiny van. He had a single, crystalline clear impression of a vast hand clenching around some small and fragile collection of glass, and then the air exploded with a sound like the shattering of the pillars of the earth. The van slewed, straightened as if of its own accord, and the sudden white-faced terror of its occupants rang in Charles’s head like some horrific bell for almost a full three minutes before he could shut it out.

By the time he could hear anything at all again, the distant whisper of the minds in that buried base had vanished entirely.

“Who the hell _are_ you people?” Darwin wondered aloud, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel.

“The future,” Erika murmured, and the sudden absence of her fury was like a vast silence in the air after an impossibly mighty clap of thunder. Heather made a sound as though she might cry, and Scott hushed her with quick and careful hands. His eyes were invisible, but his face was very pale.

Raven said nothing. Hank stared out the window, horror and triumph warring on his feline face. The silver-haired girl hunkered down in her seat, and thunder boomed in the distance.

Charles took his eyes from the children and looked at Erika. His disbelieving, ashen face searched hers as if for an answer, his mind buzzing with the strain of holding itself back.

“How could you--?” He choked, swallowed it. “How could you just kill all those people?”

“As much as I would love to explain that to you, Charles, I am afraid I will be too busy losing consciousness to do so.” Somehow, impossibly, Erika’s lips twitched upward into an exhausted smile as her eyes finally fully closed. “Perhaps we can discuss it later.”

Before he could even begin to frame a reply, she had gone limp as a rag doll across the back seat. _There my emotions are._ Rage welled up, threatening to drown him. He held it as tightly as he could, but he could see the children flinch back from him.

“Y’all got a destination in mind or are we just going until this thing runs out of gas?” Darwin himself spoke with barely-restrained fury.

After a moment Raven replied, Emilio’s voice thick with unshed tears. “We have a safe place in Westchester. It’s big enough to stay there for a while.” She crossed muscular arms across her chest and stared out the window. Wind threw rain against the glass.

Closing his eyes, Charles dug marks into his palms that would last through the next day. He pictured his lungs filling with oxygen, the blood cells turning red in the alveoli and racing through his body. He filled in more and more detail, forcing himself to concentrate on the anatomy of breathing, willing his mind to calm down.

He got to the electron transport chain--farther than he’d ever had to go--before he’d found a place of relative stillness. He could feel the others thinking about death, rescue, destruction, home, Erika, the facility... Avoiding their thoughts was as essential as escaping his own; if uncontrolled they would consume everyone. He began the cycle again.

 _Inhale, diaphragm contracting, pulling air into the lungs, oxygen bonding to the receptors on the red blood cells, cells racing through veins to the heart, diastole, systole, cells and plasma flow through arteries, vessels branching and branching again, cells filling capillaries..._


	24. Chapter 24

Erika came back to the world wrapped in the warm, familiar embrace of steel and jolted upright, the space in front of her almost as dark with her eyes open as it had been with it closed. She fought down the first rush of panic and rage, hands tight in the wool blanket that had fallen across her lap, and the faint hint of moonlight through dirty windows picked out the shadowy echoes of seats and belts and the walls around her. _Metal frame. Metal siding. Lead paint. Engine block. Car. Van._ Her eyes closed again as she pulled in a breath, memory flooding in so violently that it nearly doubled her over. _The facility bending and buckling under the weight of her fury. The shearing crack of support beams echoing back to her. The press of the earth crushing floor after floor in on itself like a collapsing house of cards. The last dying scream of metal stilling after the crush._ She clung to the blanket, shoulder braced against the seat, and fought down a rush of nausea that left her light-headed and empty with exhaustion that went deeper than her body. She felt spent and sore, as though she might sleep for twenty years and finally feel rested then, and some distant part of her noted dryly that her shoulders had kinked from the uncomfortable position in which she had slept these past few hours. _Of all the times for you to be sensible instead of chivalrous, Charles..._ _._

_Charles_ _._

Her stomach clenched again, wrapping itself around a hard knot of pain, but she burned it away with a hot flare of anger. She had done what needed doing, crushed a den of butchers and kidnappers, and if he couldn’t understand why....

Her fury guttered out and collapsed. She could hardly understand why - how could she expect him to?

_Tired. I’m too damn tired for this._

She pushed herself up enough to crawl off the seat, flicking the door open with a thought and finding herself aching inside as though she’d pulled a muscle. Maybe she had. The thought made her smile, grim but real. _I’ve never tried something that large before. Didn’t know I could. First time for everything, I suppose._

She stumbled out into the moon-spattered dark, almost landing in a thick green hedge, and picked her way around it on unsteady legs to find herself looking down the hill at something that might as well have been a fairy-tale castle. It was enormous, a great arc of brick and stone wrapped around a garden that could have held a legion of guests without so much as a hint of crowding. Tennis courts, a long low frame of wood that could only be a poolhouse - every sign of luxury imaginable, laid out in as stately a fashion as any burgomaster’s villa. It was the sort of house that would have done the grand old men who’d sent her parents to the gulags proud, and it made her distantly ill to look at it. There should have been fury there, a hot coal of rage, but in truth she felt too empty even for that.

She wondered, distantly, if she would ever really feel anything again.

***

After digging up sheets, towels, extra clothes, a dinner of canned food, and some books and games the children promptly ignored, everyone had settled down in a sitting room on the ground floor, the men in armchairs and Raven on the sofa with the kids. At midnight Raven and Charles had insisted that the children lay down, escorting them to a double bedroom down the hall. Hank and Darwin had ensconced themselves in the rooms on either side. All the doors remained unlocked.

At two in the morning, the sprawling building was dark save for the warm glow of a single lamp in the sitting room. Alone with only her small light, Raven could pretend, as she had for years, that she was making camp in a cave system. Thinking of it as a natural phenomena and not a house made the huge emptiness much more bearable.

The silence and solitude soothed her, though not enough. She wasn’t sure anything would be enough. She could hardly bear to look at her own hands, couldn’t look at them without seeing dark blood and a clawed hand at her wrist.

Restless, Raven left her nest of blankets on the sofa to pace in the penumbra around the edges of the room. The walls reflected light with a dull gleam of polished wood paneling and the art pieces and other furniture cast deep shadows. After several circuits she wandered out of the room, now padding barefoot through the darkened hallways. In a moment her yellow eyes adjusted to the darkness and every moonlit square of carpet shone like a spotlight. She passed by the locked door to the library; as soon as everyone was settled, Charles had barricaded himself inside, not even bothering to hide the tumbler and bottle of gin he’d taken from the kitchen. _Can’t say I blame him. If I were a drinker I’d be completely shitfaced by now._

Her wandering took her farther, past the kitchen, around the stupidly grand main entryway, past the other sitting rooms and the servants’ quarters. She doubled back on herself, nowhere else to go and loath to climb stairs. She didn’t think she’d shake the need to be near an exit for a while.

As she padded back through a front hallway, she glimpsed a figure moving through the darkness outside. At once she froze, pulled herself back to hide behind a curtain, thankful for her darker skin tone. A moment later she released a breath. It was Erika, floating waif-like through the grounds.

She pulled open the main door. It creaked from years of disuse, and Raven called out before she stepped into the courtyard.

“Erika! Come inside.”

The older woman paused, turned, and the moonlight turned her skin to cold marble and her eyes to fathomless ebony as she swayed subtly on her feet. She might as well have been an apparition, some ghost gone walkabout, and the faint slash of her mouth was almost without expression. Almost. The pained, weary smile that lingered there was worse than nothing at all.

“Jesus, Erika...” Raven stepped forward, taking Erika’s hand and steering her inside. Closing the massive door, she stepped close, midnight blue hand against Erika’s pale forehead. ”You’re cold, we need to get you a warm drink and a blanket, come on...” The shapeshifter frowned in worry and pulled the other woman down the hall.

“I had a blanket.” Erika’s voice was rough, almost rusty, but a sliver of green life in her eyes caught Raven and held her. “You brought that. _Danke, liebling_.” Her free hand slid along the line of the younger woman’s hip, coming to rest on a smooth curve of scale just above her waist, and a little of the pallor went out of her face. “If you will find me a bed, I will be well enough in the morning.”

Raven twined her fingers in Erika’s and stood on tiptoes to kiss her dark hair. “I’ll make you tea and then show you your bed. No arguments.” She placed a dark finger against Erika’s lips, trying to look stern but mostly exuding worry. She turned again and pulled Erika into the kitchen.

While the water heated to boiling and the chamomile steeped in an ornate teapot, Raven kept a watchful eye on Erika. Under the harsh light of the kitchen she looked even more washed-out, her elbows braced against the table to hold her head up. It made her look old, almost fragile, and there was a weariness cut into her face that Raven had never seen there before. It frightened her, a little - as if the sun had suddenly gone dim or the stars turned to faded embers. Then those eyes lifted to hers, the green in them finally brighter than the shadows, and Erika’s smile breathed life back into her cheeks. “You are having trouble sleeping too, I think.”

Raven quirked the corner of her mouth and looked up at the molded ceiling. She followed the embossed swirls and flourishes with her eyes for a moment.

“Was it like this before? Did you wake up one morning and discover that you were in the middle of a war?” She fixed a steady yellow gaze on Erika. “There are so many things I’d never seen or done before yesterday.”

“There were warnings - so many warnings.” Erika sighed, but kept her eyes on Raven’s. “I was young, of course - younger than you. I didn’t understand. Then one day, they came and smashed the shops. The streets were full of broken glass. It was my birthday, and the streets were full of glass and the shopkeepers trying to clean it up, and knowing that there would be worse. My parents, they said it would be all right. That the worst had come and gone.” Her voice tried to break, but she held it steady with a force of will she didn’t know she still had. “Then there were the beatings in the street. The threats. The marches. My parents packed their things and tried to flee to Poland; we were no safer there. They penned us in, beat us, made us wear the golden star so everyone could see who it was acceptable to abuse.” Her fingers stroked the inside of her arm, where the numbers still burned, and her eyes were two slivers of emerald ice. “Then they came to take us away for the last time, and I swore that if I were a boy I would have killed as many as I could. I remember the first I did kill - he was a pig and he made Maya do things that I would not repeat to a stone. I took his knife and I drove it into him and then I made him fall into the wire - the barbed wire - so that the rats would have him before he was found. I don’t know how old I was, then. The time all ran together in the camps. I swore I would never let them put me or mine in a cage again. I swore it.”

She was silent a moment, looking down at her hands, and then looked back up at Raven with her mouth compressed in a hard line. “I am not sorry I kept my word.”

Raven stared back with grief all over her features and in her muscles. She could feel it like poison in her blood. “It was awful, what happened in that lab...what they did and what you did. I am fucking furious at them,” she took a deep breath, voice wobbling, “and their experiments and guns, their cages...” She pulled out a tray with trembling hands and arranged the tea pot and a cup on it. “I wanted them to die. And all the same I’m thinking about their parents and kids and wives, all the people who loved them.” With a fork she fished the tea bags out of the pot and threw them away. Carrying the tray, she stopped next to Erika at the table. Looking down at her exhausted friend, her expression was an odd combination of rage and affection. “But they made us disappear, and I’m not sorry you stopped them either.”

Erika looked up at her as she set the tray down, and those narrow lips moved in a shadow of a smile as she reached up to touch Raven’s face with one slender hand. “All the guards at Auschwitz were family men, too. They used to tell stories about their families while they worked.” Her eyes were dark and full of fire, but there was a shadow of self-knowledge there that seemed to pain her. “I wish we lived in a world that did not require choosing between being a victim and being willing to stain yourself in blood.”

The venom drained from Raven, leaving her worn out. “Me, too.”

The shapeshifter easily balanced the tea tray on one blue arm and took Erika’s hand. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Bed. Yes.” Erika stood slowly, a touch unevenly, and offered Raven a faint but gentle smile. “Perhaps you will lay down with me, and we will both try to sleep our griefs away.”

The younger woman gave her a tired smile and led her to the bedroom across the hall from Hank’s. Inside, she closed the door and turned on only one lamp. It lit the room in a soft glow, making it another cave lined in dark wood and old-fashioned wallpaper. The chairs and trunks were lumpy boulders full of shadows, but the big four-poster bed was made with fresh linens and the nightstand was ready for use.

Raven set the tray on the stand and turned, lifting hands to Erika’s buttons. “You can keep the rest of it, but the coat and shoes are coming off.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Erika lips twitched, her eyes holding Raven’s, and she shrugged off her long coat and the jacket beneath it with the ease of long practice. The boots took a few seconds longer, their fasteners clumsy in weary fingers, but the metal buttons of her waistcoat unfastened themselves with the lightest touch. She dropped the necktie on top of it, careless for once, and presented herself as if for inspection. “Acceptable?”

Raven failed to suppress a chuckle. She slid her hands around Erika’s waist, relishing her warmth through the fabric of her blouse. Pulling her close, Raven gave Erika a teasing kiss as she pulled her to the bed. “I’m definitely going to do more about your clothes, but I think the post-battle debauchery can wait until morning.” She squeezed the older woman’s thigh and then calmly poured the chamomile and handed Erika the cup with a waggle of her eyebrows. “Drink your tea.”

It was a perversely impish impulse, but Erika was glad enough to feel anything at all at the moment that she didn’t try to restrain it. Putting her legs neatly together and resting her hand in her lap, she sipped her tea with a polite neatness that would have done any London debutante proud. The effect, strange as it was on her, was to give the impression of a far younger and more modest woman who might well blush at the slightest impropriety. Raven couldn’t contain herself and laughed outright, falling back onto the mattress.

As she quieted, she crawled under the luxurious duvet, burrowing into her pillow. Erika sipped her tea and Raven watched her, cataloging the planes of her face and the shape of her body. As always, she was fascinated by the contrast between Erika’s strong, spare frame and the softness of her hair and skin. _Opposite of me, all scaly and curvy..._

When the physicist finished and placed the cup back on the tray, Raven pulled her down, curling a scaled arm around her waist and pressing blue lips to the back of her neck. With a flick of Erika’s hand the light switch clicked off obligingly. In the darkness and warmth, Raven felt sleep claiming her.

“Goodnight, Erika...”

_“Gute Nacht, mein Liebling.”_


	25. Chapter 25

 “Nnngh.”

Charles didn’t so much awaken as experience his body assaulting him in into consciousness. Painfully. Currently, the weapon of choice was a hideous combination of nausea and a ripping headache. He wanted to throw up, but he knew that each heave would bang his poor, abused brain against his skull. It made him doubly wary of movement and sensory input of any kind.

He’d have to deal with it eventually, and emptying his stomach would make way for aspirin and lots of water. Or water and lots of aspirin. Something. Anything had to be better than now. Probably.

Eyes closed, he peeled himself off the sofa cushions, fairly sure that the embroidered floral pattern was pressed into the left side of his face. As he came fully upright he passed into a sunbeam, light stabbing through his eyelids all the way through his brain. He hissed in pain, throwing an arm up to block the light.

He considered checking the time, and then decided that opening his eyes could wait for important tasks, like not banging himself on furniture on his way to the bathroom.

He stood, one hand on the arm of the sofa to steady himself, wobbling as he rose. He stood there for a seconds, allowing his head and stomach to catch up to the agenda, and turned himself away from the god-awful light source. He steeled himself and squinted his eyes open.

“Ugh.”

The distance between the study and the nearest bathroom was much longer than it had any right to be. He spent his entire focus on getting there without being sick on the carpet. The triumph of success was lost in the next few minutes of complete misery.

Charles squinted and winced through splashing his face with water, digging mothballed clothes out of his old room, swallowing three glasses of water and twice the recommended dosage of aspirin, and brushing his teeth. Miserable as he was, he wouldn’t go far from the others, and so he padded back downstairs carefully so as not to jar his head. The sitting room, thank God, had the thick curtains drawn and a nice nest of blankets of the sofa.

He rolled himself into the nest and pulled the covers over his face.

 ***

Some time later--hours or minutes, he had no way to judge--he woke to the sound of someone poking around the kitchen with vague thoughts of searching. He didn’t try to listen harder; the last time he’d tried telepathy with a hangover, the mental voices had given him a migrane.

Part of him wanted to get up and help, but it was vetoed by the parts of him still trying to die quietly. He stayed where he was, hunkering down further into his cocoon.

The sounds ceased, and the bubble of thoughts crept towards the sitting room. A moment later, a tentative hand was brushing his shoulder.

“Mister Xavier, my head hurts. Do you have any aspirin?”

Heather, who was wearing a shirt that Charles vaguely recognized as having once belonged to Raven and that was slightly too big for her, looked up at him with an expression that was as sweet and shyly polite as one could possibly be while being utterly cranky and in considerable pain.

Charles eased himself into a sitting position, smiling kindly at the girl through his own suffering. “Sure, Heather. This way.”

He stood carefully, glad to notice that the morning purge and medication had done him well. Instead of roadkill, now he felt merely like he’d been jumped in an alley.

The door to Darwin’s room opened as they passed. The tall man brought a dark, callused hand to his head, rubbing and wincing. “Hey,” he whispered, “I got a hangover I don’t remember earning. Where’re your meds?”

“We’re just getting some now...” Charles stopped, the realization falling together. “Oh. I’m terribly sorry.”

Heather and Darwin both looked at him as curiously as two headache-sufferers could. Charles looked at a spot on the wall. “You have my headache.”

Heather glared in confusion and growing annoyance. Darwin just looked at him.

“Of course we do. Will meds help?”

Charles shook his head slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose when it wasn’t slowly enough. “I’m afraid not. I’ll...get as much distance as I can for today, try to shield myself. I am truly sorry, my friends.” He swallowed. “I’ll show you the kitchen and pack myself some lunch. I don’t know how long it will take for me to either feel better or strengthen my shields.”

Heather and Darwin shared a look. He shrugged, and the two of them followed Charles back to the kitchen.

While Darwin and Heather were digging through the canned goods for suitable breakfast food, Charles gathered a dented canteen, a can of red beans, and two or three books. By the time Heather had assembled a rather nice fruit salad, the smell of the chicken noodle soup Darwin was heating on the stove had brought in everyone but Erika, all of whom shared the same headache and varying levels of crankiness.

“Charles Francis Xavier, I hate you so much right now.” Raven glared. She was sitting with scaled elbows propped on the table, her head resting in her hands. The fact that her words were mostly received by the surface of the table did nothing to leach the venom from her tone.

Scott snickered. “Francis?”

Charles glared at the top of Raven’s head as he answered. “The name’s been in the family for a long time.”

Ororo tried to hide a smile and opted, with all the tact of her fifteen years, for changing the subject. “Where’s Miz Lehnsherr?”

At the mention of Erika, Charles’ shoulders stiffened. He stared pointedly at his knapsack.

Raven continued to address the table. “She’s going through newspapers in the sitting room.”

“Does she have a headache, too? Because this stinks.” Scott reached up to rub his head, stopped short of his glasses - from which Erika had removed the binding straps but which remained otherwise thoroughly oversized and awkward - and finally resigned himself to fidgeting in his chair. “Why do we have to have Mister Xavier’s headache? Can’t he just have it back?”

Hank, who had been perched awkwardly on one of the expansive counters examining one of the strange helmets Erika had brought with her out of the facility with the air of someone engaged in deep thought on one subject to avoid thinking about anything else, looked up with a suddenly intent look in his eyes. “You know, that isn’t a half-bad idea. I think we might be able to manage that.”

“Yes, _please_. Return to sender,” Darwin muttered to the soup.

With an agility that was positively astonishing considering his lingering limp, Hank vaulted off the counter and bounded across the room. In under two seconds, the helmet was neatly perched on Charles’ head and the throbbing ache ringing the inside of the group’s skulls had vanished with only the lingering tingle of tense muscles to mark its passage.

Charles had turned to Hank in sluggish surprise at the speed of the other mutant’s actions. The next moment something almost unthinkable happened, something that Charles hadn’t experienced since he was a very small child.

He was alone in his own head.

He frowned slowly, eyes darting to each person in the room. No surface thoughts filling the room, no emotional over- or undertones. Looking at them was bizzare; without their minds they seemed more like perfect, life-size television projections than people. He couldn’t stand it, had to feel them; without conscious thought he reached out, straining to get past the silence.

Then, thirty seconds after the helmet had come down, Charles began to scream. His own power was reflected back at him, battering his mind, and he instinctively pushed it away; in an instant the feedback loop of his echoing telepathy became excruciating. He sank to the floor, hands tight against the strange metal. _Too much, too much for them..._ He was aware, distantly, of the sudden chaos in the kitchen and of the violent slam of the door as something flung it open with enough force to rebound it from the wall. The world shrank to a bright, hot center of pain, and his fingers flailed across the cold metal in helpless, reflexive shudders.

Hands locked around his, slender and strong and urgently sure, and Erika’s voice cut through the pain in his skull and the sound of his screams like a surgeon’s scalpel. “Charles, listen to me. _Listen_ to me. I need you to stop thinking, Charles - _stop thinking._ Start with one thought, just _one_ thought, do you understand? Give one thought your complete focus.”

Distantly, Charles could still hear himself screaming, though by now it was eclipsed by the raging noise in his mind. He took a deep breath, thumbs folded over Erika’s fingers.

_Inhale, alveoli expanding to pull in oxygen, ow god pain pain pain..._

Another breath. _Gene sequencing, GATC, chance of a recessive phenotype roughly one in... no, no not working, still the pain..._

Another. His grip on Erika tightened. _New Year’s, dancing, going to dinner, the walk in the dark, no, no, something else, god it hurts; the car crash--cold, December, the play, our debate, terror, lights, Erika, Erika moving the car, she’s safe, alive, powerful, mutant, beautiful, magnetokinetic, amazing_ _._

After what seemed like a long time--after re-living their discovery of each other many times--Charles stopped screaming. The tension in his face abated somewhat, and his breathing became more steady. Erika’s hands were almost gentle on his, now, and she drew the helmet off of him slowly and carefully without needing to touch it with her hands. It spun free, clattering like a discarded set of irons, and suddenly Charles’ mind was _filling_ the room as if it were going to overflow its boundaries and tumble free all the way to the state line or beyond.

He gasped in relief, no longer at the mercy of his compounded power. Letting his breath slow, he reveled for a moment in his unfettered reach. He could feel the minds of everyone in the room and most of the people in the surrounding square mile. He pushed himself further, and touched person after person, wanting to feel them all but content to know that he _could_ , until his awareness settled on the edge of the city, a huge mass of consciousnesses buzzing like a hive of seven million bees. It was glorious, and intoxicating, and he knew he had to come back down.

Closing his eyes he pulled his awareness back into himself. He returned to being what he was: a giant always using less than his whole strength, always holding back.

When he took another centering breath and opened his eyes, Erika filled his field of vision. She was in the midst of giving Hank - and the room generally - the tongue lashing of their lives. “... and if you _hadn’t_ managed to kill him by burning out his brain, you ran an excellent chance of him reducing you all to quivering vegetables by sheer overreaction when he got the helmet _off_ _._ In short, Doctor McCoy, the next time you have a half-clever idea about performing untested experiments on Charles, I suggest you don’t!”

Xavier pulled himself to his feet using the counter, glancing at Hank’s expression - a mixture of guilt and embarrassment leavened with a delicate chill of genuine fear. He would have been amused if not for the fact that the good doctor had managed to introduce Charles to an entirely new universe of pain. He put a hand on Erika’s elbow.

“Thank you.” His voice was hoarse from screaming and tight with their unresolved conflicts, but also honestly grateful. “I think I’m all right now, though I am still going to spend some time at the pond on the far side of the grounds.”

“You shouldn’t go alone.” Her voice was almost as husky as his was, her eyes raking him as if looking for some sign of direct injury - blood dripping from his pores, perhaps. “Take someone with you.”

Even without the shift in her mental vibrations her concern was almost overwhelming. Charles found himself wanting nothing more than to gather her to himself or collapse in her arms, forgetting all the pain and planning and hard decisions. He looked away.

Glancing at the other occupants, he smiled wryly. “Any volunteers? I’ll teach you some mind-shielding techniques.”

There was an awkward pause as everyone suddenly had something very interesting to look at besides Charles. It was almost getting painful when Ororo sat up straighter in her seat. “I’ll go with you, Mr. Xavier,” she offered. “I miss the sky.”

Charles smiled again, kindly this time. “Wonderful.”

They went out together, and Erika stalked out a few minutes later to return to whatever otherwise-abandoned room she’d been brooding in beforehand. The remaining five mutants in the kitchen, all in varying stages of shock, just sat there for a long ten minutes or so.

“Wow,” Scott said into the silence. “Do people always do this much screaming around here?”

Scott had voiced it, but everyone in the kitchen turned curious looks to Raven. She frowned at the boy, annoyed that given his recent experiences he kind of had a point. She sighed.

“In the last day and a half, there have been plenty of good reasons for screaming.” She stood to gather bowls from a cabinet and distribute them. “I hope to God that it doesn’t become normal.” She served Heather and herself from the big pot and leaned on the counter. As he stepped up to the stove, Scott opened his mouth to speak. Raven held a scaled finger to his lips.

“That’s all the uncomfortable questions I can take for today, kid. Eat your soup.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you think verbal thoughts, your brain gives off certain electrical signals. (Scientists are actually working with those to make a real-life telepathy helmet for the military. Isn't the twenty-first century cool?) Therefore, Erika's magnetic aura acts as interference, as we've shown throughout the story.
> 
> The idea with the helmet is that it works a bit like a Faraday cage: any thought-waves are absorbed or bounce off. If you're outside the helmet, you can't get in; if you're inside, you can't get out. Normal thoughts are "quiet" enough that non-telepaths can wear the helmet painlessly. For poor Charles, his thoughts are much "louder", and create lots of painful echoing.


	26. Chapter 26

The drawing room was thick enough with tension and residual heat from the spring evening that when Raven finally opened the window to let in the night air it was an almost overwhelming relief. People sank back into their chairs, pulled in a long breath, got themselves together, calmed down and settled.

“Whatever else we may think, McCoy is going to need a hospital in the next few days. We gain nothing by waiting.” Erika, her accent thick in her voice and her left hand braced on the marble fireplace, put a tangible effort into making herself both clear and measured. She was freshly dressed, thanks to the suitcases a call from Charles had summoned from the hotel - by courier, no less - and that small comfort seemed to have settled her nerves if not her temper. “Whoever may be waiting, we will have to face or avoid eventually. Better to do so when we can control the space, when it is not with the children present. It is not my intention to say that we ought to use him as bait, but that is what he will be when he enters the hospital - with or without our protection. I say that we go and we protect him. The children can remain here for the duration of our time in the city, and the angel has already agreed to watch over them since he cannot be seen to be involved with us.”

“As little as I like the idea - or being talked about in the third person, for that matter - I can’t argue.” Hank shifted uncomfortably, favoring his half-healed leg, and his smile showed sharp ivory teeth when he glanced at Erika. “I don’t plan to limp the rest of my life - or hide, for that matter. So if you want to keep any government goons from dragging me out of the hospital before we part ways... well, thanks, I guess.”

Raven’s own smile was somewhere between flirtatious and predatory, holding Hank’s cat eyes with her own yellow gaze.

“Our pleasure. Nobody’s fucking with us tomorrow.”

Darwin shifted, sitting with arms crossed over his chest. He nodded to Hank. “Yeah, I’m in.” He looked at everyone else. “But it’s my swan song. Don’t get me wrong--I’m really grateful that y’all busted us out of there. It’s just that this outfit ain’t me. I’m not cut out for running around and spooking spooks.”

“I hear that.” Hank’s eyes held Raven’s, then flicked away as he dragged in a deep breath that seemed to pull half the air from the room. “I’ve got someone to get home to. If you need me for something... well, I guess I owe you one. But I’ve got a life to get on with.”

Erika said nothing, her eyes locked somewhere in the bookcases. If some part of her trembled with frustration and the desire to shake their guests until they understood _no-one_ would be getting on with their lives or settling down, none of them but Charles could have known it.

The telepath sat with legs crossed and his chin resting on his fist, frowning into the middle distance. The plan was rational and their predictions seemed solid, given what they knew about the ‘goons.’ As reasonable as it seemed, the memory of their first few minutes of escape put a gnawing dread into his stomach. He was tempted to stay at the mansion, make them go without him, wash his hands of whatever wrong might happen--

Of whatever wrong Erika might commit.

“I know we aren’t expecting them to make a move in public, but what if they do? How do _we_ move in public?” Charles steepled his fingers over his mouth. He was looking at Raven and Hank, but everyone knew he was talking to Erika.

“Quietly.” Erika answered him directly without looking at him, making a show of still talking to the group as a whole. “Whatever happens at the hospital, it has to happen quietly. There are sick people, families there. They will not want to break down the doors with guns, and we will want to be quiet as well. If they move, we will... dissuade them.” Her head finally turned, her eyes meeting and holding Charles’ steadily. “Raven and Darwin will stay close to Hank and protect him. We will keep watch and intervene only if we must.” _You first, Charles._ She formed the words carefully in her head, thrusting them toward him with harsh clarity. _You will do what you can - what you are willing to do. Then, if I must... they will be carrying radios. Guns. More than enough metal._ “It would be better to avoid bloodshed, if we can. That would attract the police, who we can all agree we do not want to have involved.”

Charles’ mouth twisted at her last words, but he remained close-mouthed and silent in her head. All the others were nodding.

“We all set? For some reason running for my life and planning to hold off suits with guns makes me want some time to myself.” Darwin stood, stretching his arms over his head and crooking his mouth into the semblance of a smile.

Raven looked between Erika and Charles, then seemed to take their silence for assent. “You’re good. It’s not like we have preparations beyond ‘you go here, I go there, don’t get shot.’”

Darwin gave her a long, flat look. “Promise me you’ll never try to reassure me again, okay?”

Raven grinned, looking him up and down with a glint in her eye that Charles could feel from across the room. “Would you object to being consoled?”

In his armchair, her brother hid his face in his hands and sank deeper into the cushions. _Dear God. **Please** try to be a little quieter this time. Or both of you can put on the helmets. I don’t care._ Erika’s lips twitched, and whether it was the whisper of a smile or a growl even Charles couldn't say. Darwin, for his part, just stared at her for a minute before he broke into a laugh that said as clearly as his thoughts _What the hell?_ “Well, damn. I guess I’m not _that_ tired.” He let himself enjoy watching the sweeping cobalt curves of Raven’s body as she stood, gracefully shedding the throw blanket, and sauntered down the hallway. A moment passed and Darwin moved after her.

The air in the drawing room buzzed silently with tension, and Hank McCoy pulled himself out of his chair with a flex of his broad furred arms. “On that note, _I_ am going to sleep. Being bait requires, I think, a full night’s rest.” With a final smile that might have been a laugh or a snarl at his hosts, he limped out of the room at a brisk bounding pace that suggested he was more than glad to leave it.

For the first time since New York, Erika and Charles were alone.

Charles leaned back and tapped steepled index fingers against his lips, looking anxious and heartsick. He sighed and looked at Erika, still as painful as it had been since the rescue. Since she’d killed the facility and all its employees.

“What happens after the hospital?”

“McCoy and Darwin go back to their lives, apparently. We do our best to protect the children. Raise them, I suppose - it isn’t as though we can send them away, as if they have homes to go to...” Erika trailed off, her eyes coming back from their sudden drift toward the stairs to rest on his face with sudden clarity. “But that isn’t what you mean, is it?”

He looked into her eyes and it was plain to see that his next words cut his throat and mouth.

“You want to avoid bloodshed, _if possible._ You’ll kill if it’s _necessary_. For God’s sake, Erika, I...I can’t. I won’t.”

“You’re a telepath, Charles.” Her voice was soft as she looked down at him, and her eyes were almost mercilessly gentle. “I doubt it will be necessary for you to kill anyone, if it comes to that.”

“I mean I can’t be there when you kill.” His face broke, eyes anguished. “I don’t want you to kill. With all my heart, I don’t want you to do it ever again. And I’m a telepath.”

Her gaze hardened subtly, her lips narrowing into a blade-thin line. “I am not fond of killing people myself, Charles. Do you truly think it rests that easy with me, to end a life - much less a hundred? I am not a thing of iron.”

He shook his head again. “Of course not. I know what you felt. It’s not about that.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Not enjoying it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t do it.” Suddenly he stood, began pacing.

“So many people have one point of fracture between them and a loved one. It hurts all of them. They deal with it differently;” he said, staring at the wall, “some end the relationship.” He reached the bookcase, turned sharply. “More of them go on, either waiting like a martyr or nagging or maniuplating their sweetie in the hope that some day they’ll change and everything will be peaches and cream.” He stopped, eyes boring into Erika’s. “I want you as you are--except for the violence. The manipulation or the waiting are terrible but they’re not as bad as what I’ve been tempted to do.” His voice dropped. “So you should go.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Charles.” The sharpness of her glance couldn’t hide the spike of fear that pulsed through her sense, but it was a fear that was dulled by familiarity. “If I were going to leave because I was afraid you would reach into my head and start bending things, I would have done it the moment I felt you behind my eyes. It may come as a shock to _you_ that you’re tempted, but to me...” she trailed off with a short, jagged laugh that only her sudden smile kept from cutting him. “You’re just a man, Charles, not a saint. I won’t pretend I’m not afraid of you, but we’ve talked about that.”

_I still remember my promise._

Again her resolve coiled around him, made him feel more contained, less dangerous. If his guilt and fear had been the only things spurring him to this moment, it would have been resolved there. They could fold into each others’ arms and go on protecting and nurturing their kind.

Tears pricked his eyes and he scrubbed at his face. “We have.” _It’s more than anyone else could give me, love, but it’s not enough._

She reached out to him, her hand settling against the curve of his jaw, and he could feel her mind through the contact: thick with her hurt at the idea of him being afraid enough to try to push her away but with a core of devotion to it that refused to be dented. “I’m not going anywhere, Charles. You can’t drive me off by being afraid of yourself, or even of me.”

He wrapped his fingers gently around hers, pressing her hand to his face, and when he rose from the chair he leaned his forehead against hers as he settled his other hand on her shoulder. For a long moment he stood there, her touch burning on his skin, her beautiful complex mind still open to him despite her fear. He tried to memorize her like that, surface to core. It would hurt to think of her later, but he couldn’t avoid trying to hold on to as much as he could.

He drew a deep, shaking breath, lowered his hands, and stepped back. “Erika...as much as I want this--as much as I love you--I won’t be able to sleep at night if I stand by and do nothing every time you kill.”

“Charles...” she wanted to tell him that it wouldn’t happen again, that it wouldn’t be often... anything to take that sudden distance from between them. She wouldn’t, though. She was too honest for that - too stubborn. Instead, she said the only thing she could think of that was true and might still matter. “It is only to keep you and our people safe. Only ever for that.”

He shook his head. “People go to war believing that they must do so to keep their people safe. Where does it end?” He turned away.

“When they leave us be, Charles!” She grabbed his shoulder, spun him back toward her with fire in her eyes. “When they don’t take us from the streets and experiment on us in labs like rats or build wire cages to lock you away in! When our people don’t have to be afraid of the police beating them to death or handing them over to invisible men who do work that the government will never admit to! That’s when it ends, Charles: when we are safe and free from the shadow of their fear!”

He shrugged off her hand, glaring. “And crushing three hundred people--many of whom didn’t even _know_ they worked in a facility that held prisoners-- _won’t_ make them see us as more of a threat? It won’t make them leave us alone. It will make them build bigger guns and labs and cages and be rather more aggressive in using them.”

“If they did not know, it is because they chose not to know. To work for the sort of people who would do it and not tell them.” She held his eyes, tall and proud and unflinching. “If it does not give them pause in building another such lab, then it will cost them time at least. Time for us to reach out, to find others like us and make them ready to keep themselves safe.”

“It’s not just about the lab. What happens when you learn about the next secret facility? Will you destroy it, too? Will you ask the children to help you? And what will you do when there’s open violence in the city--swoop in and kill everyone who’s laid hands on a mutant? How would that help?”

She turned away, eyes searching the night outside the window, and her voice turned low and tight with anger. “I do not know, Charles. I only know that I cannot stand by and do nothing while they hurt my people again. I would not ask it of the children - their lives and the choices are their own. Ought to be. For myself... I cannot let them hold our people prisoner for no crime but their difference, or beat us in the streets while your so-called decent people turn away or even help. I cannot do nothing.”

Charles regarded the set of her shoulders and the line of tension in her throat. Her back might as well have been a brick wall for how much headway he felt he was making. “People are more than just fear and hatred, Erika. Our angels sit right next to our demons and it’s the one appealed to that shapes our actions.

“And how will we appeal to their better natures, Charles, if all that we do is hide and allow ourselves to be victimized? To be made an object of fear and persecution, something to blame for everything that goes wrong in their lives?” She hunched her shoulders subtly, as if warding away a weight she felt trying to close down around her. “If we make ourselves good, invisible little boys and girls, will we not be simply exterminating ourselves for them?”

Charles threw his hands up, voice slipping control. “Nonviolence is not the same as invisibility! I don’t want us to cower and let them take us! I want us to build bridges, show them that we can live together. If white and colored children can go to school together, why not human and mutant?”

“The black man has been in America for more than two hundred years, Charles, and he can still expect to be harassed by the police, to be forced to pick up his food at the back window, to be forced to live in the dregs of housing and take the worst jobs. To serve his country with his life and be spit on in return.” She turned on him, her eyes blazing, and her voice almost trembled with fury. “I do not think you want to turn to _that_ if you wish to inspire hope for a bright future in me.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not perfect and it’s not even good right now, but it’s _better_. One hundred years ago they were slaves, and now they are citizens, thanks to the constructive work done by people of both races.” He held her gaze. His voice had recovered some of its usual cadence. “They’ll be somewhere better next year, in ten years, and so will we.”

“Perhaps they will.” She hesitated, eyes searching his face as she tried to believe him - tried hard, but with little success - and then her lips hardened again into a tight, thin line. “Until then, someone will have to be there when children like the ones sleeping upstairs need to be saved, or when young men who have done nothing wrong like McCoy are taken.”

It hurt to watch that ember of hope die in her eyes.

“I’m not saying we should let them abuse us. I’m saying that there’s a difference between fending off attackers and killing people for being potentially threatening or associated with a threat. If you’re going to punish people for crimes they _might_ commit then you’re going beyond the bounds of protection and making things worse for both sides.”

“It is not,” she noted with a certain cutting dryness, “as though I was planning, to publicly execute everyone who associates with the FBI.”

The look he gave her was frustrated and pained. “You secretly executed three hundred workers!”

“Three hundred secret police and their associates - the sort of people who would take children for experiments and kill a young woman just to study her body.” She dragged in a breath, anger banked in her eyes as she let them wander. “I will not pretend that it does not bother me, but I am not going to apologize to putting an end to that... that place.”

In her eyes and voice he perceived the shadow of another isolated facility, years and miles away. His hand floated up towards her, hung in the air next to her shoulder for a moment, and then came to rest at his side.

“I won’t stop thinking it was wrong.” He shifted, feeling the spikes of her anger and pain, knowing they were going to get worse. “Erika...were those people the only ones you were aiming for?”

Her head snapped up, suddenly refocused on his face, and her teeth set together with an audible click as she straightened her spine almost visibly. “They were the only ones there, Charles, and while we are discussing the subject, what do you think would have happened if I _had_ left it standing? How long do you think it would have taken them to rebuild and refill their precious little experimental cages - a week? A month? Would we have been there to save those mutants, too, or would that be too _provocative_?”

“Damn it, Erika, those were people’s lives!” he roared. “And there were other things we could have done! There are more choices than kill or be killed!” He began violently pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly. “I could have made them evacuate first! I could have wiped all their knowledge of mutants from their minds! I could have pulled the identities of all the higher-ups out of their heads and followed the chain to the very top! I could have driven the director like a Buick to all the other facilities and shut them down!”

The words hung in the air for a moment, as if they might catch the light and refract it into something searingly and impossibly bright, and then her anger collapsed into a gentle caress of regret as she cross the room to him and caught his hands, drawing him to her and embracing him tightly. “You're right, Charles,” she whispered with her hand softly pressed to the curve of his jaw, “I was angry and I wasn’t thinking. I cut off those options because smashing it to the ground was the only thing I saw as a choice, didn’t I?” A soft sigh touched his lips, and then she kissed him - warmly, tenderly and intimately as any lover could want. _Next time, my darling, I will leave it to you_ _._

He melted into her kiss without thought, basking in her sudden openness, letting himself breathe, relieved that he’d convinced her. It was, perhaps, that very softening that allowed a vague horror to creep up his spine before breaking out into terrible clarity.

He stiffened and pulled away from Erika, eyes wide. The possibilities rolled out before him, all the actions he could take, all the awful things he’d find himself doing to prevent death. His voice was a horrified murmur.

“If we work together, either I let you kill or wind up violating people myself.” Choking around a knot in his throat, he turned to lean against the window sill.

She stood behind him, bereft and suddenly furious - as though in that moment of pushing her away he had cut her somewhere deep that their arguments never quite reached. Her hands clenched at her side, her voice choking, and when she finally found her voice it was sheathed in poisonous ice. “I’m sorry, Charles, but we can’t all live in a big house and keep our hands pristine because we have money and an important name to hide behind. Some of us have to live in the real world, or at least pay attention to the ones who do.”

He flinched as the knife went in and turned his insides to frozen shards. Whether from obstinacy or being struck to the spot, he didn’t move from the window, only spoke with a coldly mechanical voice.

“Then go. Go live in the real world and really murder people. I’ll stay here and use my filthy money and influence to create something.”

There was a still, ugly silence, and then she whispered in a voice that was jagged with pain-soaked contempt “What have you ever created in your life, Charles Xavier, except a comfortable place to hide?”

She let the question hang in the air for a moment, then gathered herself together as ruthlessly as though her shattered heart was metal armor to be bolted back in place. “I will stay until McCoy is safe, and then I will go, if that is what you want.” He said nothing, and she choked on a laugh that sliced to the bone. “I see. Very well. Good evening, Professor Xavier.”

The door swung itself open ahead of her, and she went out with her spine still rigidly straight and her shoulders squared against the weight of the pain she would have hidden from him entirely if she could. He could feel her burning hiss of anguish move down the hallway and up the stairs to the room she had claimed; he took vindictive pleasure in knowing she bled. At the same time her presence only highlighted the hollow in his chest.

He stood staring out the window for a long time; if he remained completely still the edges of his wound didn’t pierce him so sharply. He only moved to a sofa when he began to sway on his feet.

Fitful sleep drifted over him as he lay on the cushions, curled on his side and wondering where he was going to find the strength to be of use in the morning.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Non-con use of telepathy

In the darkness of the New York Downtown Hospital’s subterranean parking garage, Raven stepped out of the old family Lincoln looking like the kind of man most people would want to avoid: tall, muscular, dressed in an expensive dark suit, and with a face that could unsettle a police commissioner. Nobody could be sure if he was mafia, legally hired muscle, or someone important who just happened to be brutish. Nobody, she hoped, would want to find out.

Hank emerged next, maneuvering his bad leg out of the way. Darwin swept the garage with a piercing gaze before nodding to the others and locking the doors. On this level, there were only a few people going to or from their vehicles, none of whom looked anything like the guards they’d seen at the facility. They started walking towards the stairs.

In their planning, Charles had suggested that perhaps Hank’s leg wasn’t up to stairs and that the elevator would be an easier choice. He’d been strangely withdrawn the whole morning, speaking only when absolutely necessary and staring into the middle distance much of the time. Raven had never seen him so melancholy.

To answer Charles, Hank had gently affirmed his climbing ability and said nothing more. It was plain to see that there was more Hank wasn’t saying; Raven could guess at it, but didn’t ask. It seemed like the issue was settled until Erika put the point to Charles with an acid coldness. _“Really, Charles - do you think McCoy can just go where he pleases? That all the normal, ‘decent’ folk out there will be happy to see him pass and leave him in peace? You have no idea what it’s like to have people fear, hate or scorn you with a look, do you? You understand no better than a child.”_

The most shocking thing to Raven was that Charles had barely twitched an eyebrow at the attack and only continued to stare at the far wall. The long silence in the sitting room was broken only when Darwin had asked a question about registration. Raven didn’t know what the lovers had argued about, but apparently it was big. She’d resolved to get to the bottom of it once they had taken care of Hank; she’d be damned if she just let them--or, more likely, Charles--fuck it up.

They climbed four flights of stairs before exiting into the hospital reception area. Raven and Darwin stood to either side of Hank as they moved forward. Out of the corner of her eye, Raven spotted Charles reading a newspaper in the waiting area, strategically situated to monitor the registration area. She knew that Erika would be near the main entrance, scanning everyone for weapons.

As people got a look at Hank, the patients, nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff became a crowd pressing forward to see the ‘beast-man’. Raven’s intimidating presence and Darwin’s glare gave them a bubble of space in the press of bodies as they went to register. Unfortunately, the bubble didn’t keep out sound or sight.

There were murmurs, gasps, pointing, staring, sneering, expressions of horror and fear, children hiding behind their parents, parents running out with their children, children saying at full volume some of the things the adults only whispered.

 _He is a **man**! A person!_ she wanted to scream. Her skin tightened and she had to hold down the urge to shift right there, to shock the crowd, take some of their power. Breathing deep, she didn’t. She really didn’t want to have to fight; she could take the first half-dozen, but there were so many more in the crowd. _Thank God Charles is here to prevent a riot._

She was only too glad when an anxious nurse led the three of them to a private room. It seemed like Warren’s influence was working, if only for the moment. She wouldn’t let herself hope for more. It was a nice room, anyway, with a view of the skyline. Hank sat on the bed, Darwin leaned against the wall just outside the door, and Raven sat on the uncomfortable visitor’s chair. There was little to do now but watch the rain splash against the closed window and wait. She hoped only the doctors came and not men in black suits.

***

Outside on the pavement, Erika hunched her shoulders deeper into her coat and tucked her broad-brimmed fedora closer over her ears to ward off the chill while the wind danced lightly against the broad-spread arms of her umbrella. It wasn’t hard to go unnoticed on a rain-chilled New York afternoon, and she broke up the pattern of her uneven loop around the hospital with periodic stops to read the paper tucked under her arm or to buy a cup of coffee from a vendor - never the same one twice. She scarcely bothered to pay attention to what she saw or heard, save at the most basic level of avoiding other pedestrians and traffic. Her attention was reserved for what she could _feel_ ; the thousands of moving constellations of metal and electrical pulses that made up the population inside and around the hospital. Medical equipment, cars, briefcases, toys, watches, radios, the handful of guns worn by the security guards - she was charting them all in her head as she walked, looking for suspicious clusters or anything that might be a threat. It was hard, an impossible labyrinth of moving elements, and it absorbed practically all of her concentration; that might have been a burden on most occasions, but today it was quite welcome. It kept her mind off the house in Westchester and the neatly packed cases waiting inside the door of her room. Waiting for her to come back to the collect them, and then...

She didn’t know what would come next, and it hurt to imagine. Erika put it out of her mind, and threw herself into counting sparks.

***

In the hospital’s main waiting area people’s minds were settling back into individuals again.

They’d begun that way, dozens of separate internal universes humming along their various trajectories. It generated a sort of mental drone that made it necessary for Charles to focus his concentration into a narrow funnel if he wanted to touch one particular mind clearly. It was mildly taxing, but good (it drowned out the distinctive pattern of Erika’s mind and made him forget how hollow he felt). It was fairly routine and basically the same when he went out into the city.

When Hank had arrived, Charles had felt all the minds in the room focus their attention on the blue mutant. It had been like watching a disorganized group of birds suddenly coalesce into a synchronized flock; he had still been able to perceive the individuals, but they had no longer been just themselves. In that moment they had become the crowd-mind: huge, primal, volatile. It had held him in awe and fear like a crouching predator sniffing the air. Like any crowd, it could have become a ravening tiger of a mob in an instant. There had certainly been enough fear and disgust in the room to start one.

He hadn’t let that happen. As much as the groupthink had unnerved him, he had known he was more than strong enough to rule it. Even during the height of it, managing the most unstable and influential individuals in the crowd had been a matter of concentration rather than force. He had considered merely dampening the agitation of the whole crowd, but decided he would rather give the people at least that much freedom to feel their own distress. Besides, they wanted the news to spread as far and as fast as it could, and calm people wouldn’t serve their purposes.

As he relinquished control and settled back to observe, Charles felt a distant twisting in his stomach. He could feel the questions waiting in the back of his head: how often he could expect to rearrange minds, what kinds and how much control he would take from people, and what he would permanently change. He refused to consider them, just as he refused to think about who and what he would become without Erika. In that moment, there was no future, only the task at hand.

He kept watch over the mood of the group while listening around for the secret policemen. In the room he heard none, and so widened his search, traveling up the hospital and down the garage, out on the streets for the surrounding half-mile or so. There was no one - not yet. Charles suspected that would change once someone had had time to make a phone call or two.

***

It took, as it turned out, the better part of an hour and a half.

 _Six of them on the south staircase, four on the west. Radios - small, but powerful - and pistols. No body armor. They entered twenty minutes ago, singly or in pairs, then reformed and moved up together. Sheding people now - three on the floor below, two on the floor above. Splitting up to be able to see as much of the floor as possible._ Erika’s thoughts reached out to Charles as roughly as a hand shaking him by the back of his neck, sharp with urgency and the weight of her divided concentration. _If they are carrying badges, I cannot find them. Warn Raven._

He gave her a wordless mental affirmation and then broke contact; the smallest touch with her mind resonated cruelly with the void inside him. Charles immediately sent the information on to all three of the others, getting a dulled echo of affirmative responses before closing the channels. Again sweeping the building he found the hunters, their minds cold, focused, and quick. Fingers at his temple, body settling deeper into that damned uncomfortable chair, Charles identified the team leader and dove into his mind.

He grasped the surface thoughts about the mission and followed them, down through their objective, equipment, personnel, backup. Far enough and Charles began to glimpse their training in weapons, infiltration, interrogation, capture...it was a long list. Whoever these men were, they were dangerous.

Charles pulled back to the mission; the team leader had a clear memory of the briefing by his immediate supervisor, a severe man with a nondescript voice. Charles broadcast the man’s image and position to the others.

When he found the mission objective, Charles felt a little of his tension release his shoulders. Today was a fact-finding mission only: identify any mutants who might be of interest.

Charles broadcast this also, and then began to wait. The operation team might not notice missing time, but whoever was waiting in the van outside would. It would make the memories easier to modify, too.

 _Here only to watch._ Erika began a slow walk around the building, sweeping her senses ahead of her until she found the van whose back compartment hummed with far too much electrical activity for any civilian use. _We are much alike, then - they are here to identify us, and we are here to identify them._ She passed the van with the umbrella shielding her from view, and it took only a subtle burst of electro-magnetic distortion along the frame of the van to turn every inch of magnetic tape inside into so much useless junk. _They will be recording nothing further today._

With his concentration split between the six minds of the watchers and keeping tabs on his own team, Charles felt Erika’s satisfaction distantly, and perceived only a hint of her other emotions. His own worry and pain were far away, and so he was able to reply to her without feeling too scorched. _After they’ve spent enough time inside, I’ll make them think that this was a waste of their time. They’ll walk out and drive off without trouble._

He pulled back again to observe. If he wanted to he could see from all eyes at once; when he’d tried in the past it had left him confused about normal time and space, frustrated with having only one center of experience, and disturbed by that frustration. It was simpler to keep a telepathic ear open and cycle his active attention from one viewpoint to the next. In a steady rhythm, Charles switched from Raven to the suit a floor below her; from him to the suit on the floor above; from him to Erika; from her to Hank; from Hank to the lead suit; from him to another; from him to Darwin; from him to the last two suits. Then he paused, sifting surface thoughts for signs of action before beginning again. It kept his heart quiet.

Erika turned in the front door and took the stairs to the sixth floor, folding her umbrella and letting it hang from her wrist as the rainwater still clinging to her left faint traces of her passage. She eased in past a pair of nurses chatting about their day, then began a slow circuit of the floor - picking out the watchers as much by their youth and obvious fitness as by the guns concealed under their jackets. The faces were too old to be boys, too young to be men of substance. They were the sort armies had always been built from, the sort of faces she’d seen above brown and black uniforms a lifetime ago. She memorized each of them, burned their features into her memory, and then walked to one of the couches and took out her paper. _I will remember you. I will remember all of you, as I remember the butchers who killed my family. It will not happen again - not in my lifetime. Not while I breathe._

 ***

Charles woke his sister moments before the morning nurse came to bring Hank’s breakfast and check on his vital signs. Raven had fallen asleep in the visitor’s chair about an hour after Hank had come back from the surgery drugged to the gills. The last thought she could remember was that his breathing seemed fine. Apparently Warren’s connections had at least kept Hank safe.

Before the nurse opened the door, Raven shifted back into the body guard disguise, arms crossed over her chest, sullen menace at low intensity. She could easily crank it up if necessary.

So far, it hadn’t been needed. They had all been at the hospital for nearly forty-eight hours now, and in all that time no goons had come bursting through the doors. Charles and Erika had been keeping tabs on them, destroying their recording equipment and modifying memories as they changed their shifts. Raven and Darwin had shared the task of keeping an eye on Hank, backing up and spelling one another. They had achieved a companionable balance, and Raven had had to be careful not to send flirtatious looks his way while she was in disguise. They certainly didn’t need more attention.

Since they’d arrived, Raven caught nurses, doctors, even patients trying to look through Hank’s door. None dared venture into the room, and a moment’s distant shouting no one said a word, either. The nurses assigned to Hank had stared with wide eyes to begin; the day nurse remained cool and aloof, but McCoy’s intelligence and gentleness had won over the woman on the night shift in minutes. That, at least, was good to see.

Raven watched the nurse work and sat up straighter when Hank began to stir.

“On the whole, I’ve felt better.” Hank pulled himself up into a sitting position and carefully flexed his leg, feeling the freshly-stitched tendons stretch. “Maybe I’ll go see the Dodgers tomorrow or the day after - Lewis likes baseball. What do you think?”

Raven shrugged groggily. “Shouldn’t you ask Lewis?” A yawn turned to a grin. “I’d wait a while, but it sounds great.” _Talk about showing them we’re real people with real lives,_ she didn’t say.

“No time like the present.” Hank’s smile was lopsided and had too many teeth, but there was real warmth to it. “Lewis will love it. Soon as I can walk, we’ll be on the first base line.”

The nurse left, and Darwin came into lean on the wall. “‘Morning,” he nodded, then yawned, which set off another one in Raven. “Damn. I need to get some shut-eye.”

 ***

Sitting in another waiting room on the fifth floor (oncology), Charles listened to the three of them talk about Hank and the morning in general. Hank’s mind, though a little unbalanced from painkillers, was by far the clearest; even on a bad day the man was a genius. Raven had finally gotten some sleep on their second night at the hospital, but not enough, and it took more of her concentration than usual to keep up appearances. Darwin had napped during the surgery itself, but had otherwise been awake the whole time. His thoughts were fully-formed, but they moved like a broken-down car trailing pieces as it went.

It would only make Charles’ task easier.

The conversation in the private room curled around to the moment at hand. There were no complications with Hank’s leg and the doctors expected to release him in the next day or so; the goons hadn’t made any move to capture or attack them; and Darwin was resolute in his decision to make as normal a life for himself as he could. Charles didn’t blame him, and was glad that he was going to at least get the chance.

The three upstairs said their goodbyes. _Hey Professors._ Charles allowed Erika to hear Darwin.  _This is where I get off. Thanks for everything. Hope your lives are less crazy than the past few days._

 _If you ever change you mind..._ Erika trailed off, the clarity of her understanding that he wouldn’t suddenly sharp in the air. _Goodbye, Darwin._

 _We’re glad you’re out of there,_ Charles replied. _Be safe._ He broke both connections, keeping his next thought to himself.

_I am so, so sorry, my friend._

Normally memory modification wouldn’t be difficult at all, but considering that Charles himself had slept only six hours in the last forty, he needed all the advantages he could get. Memories could quickly get entangled in the rest of the mind, and removing or altering them was often precision work.

As Darwin rode the elevator to the ground floor, Charles gathered his power into the other man’s mind. The telepath held on loosely to the awareness of the government goons and the other mutants; like keeping an ear open, it took only partial awareness. He still had enough power and attention.

Darwin stepped out of the elevator and made his way, exhausted but with head held high, across the lobby. As soon as he left the building, Charles began.

The adaptive mutant was focused on _getting the Hell out of Dodge,_ and Charles encouraged the fervor of the thought. He worked his way past the surface and sank into the tangled web of Darwin’s memories.

The most recent were on top; three days of hospital guard duty already blurring together into an indistinguishable mash. Below that were the impressions of planning and rest at the mansion, which Charles grasped and followed further back. He pulled himself along some of the most remarkable hours of Darwin’s life until he was at the moment in which Charles had informed the prisoners of their rescue.

It truly was only a moment, and Charles exerted the lightest mental touch to make it dissolve into nothing. It was one memory so short that Darwin would never know it had been there.

Watching the wall of the cell rip itself out into the hallway was an interesting experience from the inside. Charles left that to let Darwin know that he had been broken out rather than released; to let him know to be wary. Everything else, Charles took.

From the moment in the broken cell, Charles began unraveling moments and smoothing them into nothingness; he could have changed the recollections instead, but in penance or warning he wanted the other mutant to know what he’d done.

Darwin walked down the rainy street, shoulders hunched forward, angling for a subway entrance, and with each step Charles destroyed more and more of his memories. He worked his way up to just before the present moment, and sat ready to observe the other man's reaction. 

Darwin stepped into a shop-lined tunnel and blinked. He could remember his last steps, remember the street behind him and the subway station he was in, but beyond that, nothing. _What am I doing here?_ He moved to kneel against the wall, ostensibly tying his shoes but surreptitiously checking for pursuers or lab goons.

A moment passed. He saw no enemies nor hunters. He relaxed slightly, then patted his pockets, frowning. _No wallet; they took it when they tossed me in there. Clothes are the ones I was wearing at the bar--and in the lab. But weren’t they dirtier than this last I checked?_

He began walking again, if only to be moving. He was stuck--the last few moments had been like waking up, or walking out of deep shadow. Before that, he’d been in his cell, watching it get pulled apart by _something_. He couldn’t find anything in between.

_Okay. Okay, Darwin. Someone crazy-powerful broke me out of my cell, brought me downtown, erased parts of my memory, and did my laundry. Probably not in that order._

He reached the end of the shopping hall and, after a moment, turned down a side tunnel leading to a platform. Anger began to overtake him. _I’d like to find this person--people?-and show them a thing or two..._ He swallowed, anger turning to fear at the sheer power it must have taken to do all that. _Or I can just run like hell and be glad THEY don’t want me in a box._ He angled towards a distracted businessman, ‘accidentally’ ran into him, palmed his wallet, and paid subway fare as far as Grand Central. _Boston? D.C.? Anywhere but here._

Distantly, Charles reinforced Darwin’s desire to move on, sighed, and withdrew. Darwin was missing days of his life and was uninterested in getting them back.

The telepath let his awareness drift back to the hospital. The goons were making their clockwork rounds, Raven was talking with Hank, and Erika was finishing another round of audio tape and photographic film destruction. Charles scrubbed at his bloodshot eyes as a wave of weariness and self-loathing swept over him.

It had been the least of three evils, and Charles knew he preferred it to making Darwin stay or letting him walk around with their house, faces and names in his head. Still, he was far from at peace with the decision, and knew it would haunt him for a long time. _Is this what she wants me to do?_ He sank into the chair and let his head roll back. _Is this what it takes to work with her?_

He wanted to forget, and though he thought he probably couldn’t, that scared him. He couldn’t alter people and let no one be the wiser. Someone had to know. Someone had to keep him accountable.

 _They can’t use Darwin to find us or the children anymore,_ he sent to Erika. _And he’s probably moving out of town._ He closed the connection immediately, unwilling to hear her response. He wasn’t sure if her approval or disgust would feel worse.

Staring at the ceiling, Charles thoroughly hated himself. He couldn’t do this on a regular basis.

 _I am so, terribly sorry._  


	28. Chapter 28

In the end, no-one had tried anything. The big, clean-cut men with their guns and recording equipment had left empty-handed, looking for a big man with mob connections who would never be seen again, and McCoy had gone home to his lover and - presumably - nine innings of the Dodgers. It had been a long drive back to the mansion, but no-one had wanted to leave the children alone any longer than was necessary - not even long enough to stop by and pick up their things from the hotel.

Warren had still been there when they arrived, the children clustered together in the den around the television for collective comfort as much as anything, and when Erika stepped through the doorway and saw them it was everything she could do to keep a smile of welcome on her face. To kneel down and catch Heather, when she ran to be embraced, and to meet Scott’s hidden eyes from across the room and give him the reassurance he could not bring himself to ask for.

It was a lie, of course. She could feel her cases upstairs, already repacked, and they dug into her like knives when his shoulders slumped with relief. She understood the uses of lies - especially comforting ones. Her parents had given her enough.

Ororo regarded the three adults with guarded, calculating glances. “How long are the three of you going to stay?”

Erika’s throat tightened, and meeting those wary eyes the words would not come. _Child... oh, child, how well I know that pain._ She knew she had to speak, had to form the lie with her lips that she had already told with her presence, and yet the syllables locked against her teeth and would not pass. For a long moment, looking into Ororo’s eyes, she understood why her mother’s voice had trembled so.

Charles’ heart clenched to feel Erika’s anguish. He quickly suppressed the wave of guilt that threatened to overwhelm him, and said what he hoped would be true enough to comfort without deceiving too deeply.

“This is our home,” he failed to specify. He kept his voice as steady as he could and projected soothing confidence.

Heather, much to their shared and silent relief, broke the moment with a raw-voiced question against Erika’s shoulder. “How long are we allowed to stay?”

“Forever.” Erika’s voice was quiet iron, the shift of ground giving her enough time to regain her balance so that there was no doubting the certainty in her voice. She looked at Scott and Ororo, giving them the steel in her eyes, and squeezed Heather tightly in unaccustomed comfort as she lifted her gaze to Charles’ face. “This is your home now, as well, and you will never have to leave it. No one will take you from it. Do you understand?”

Only the children’s hesitant relief allowed Charles any peace. His smile was brittle. “Are any of you hungry? I’m afraid that we’re all very tired and need an early night, but tomorrow we’ll see about getting this old place more comfortable.”

As her brother supervised a kitchen raid, Raven frowned. Her gaze followed Erika down the hallway, unwanted pieces tumbling slowly together in her mind. _I won't believe it. She would never._

 ***

Erika stood in the small bedroom, letting her senses sweep over the room one more time - enough to be sure she’d left nothing important behind. The two square, keyless boxes were inside her trunk, the clothing she needed, the few sentimental objects she could not bear to leave behind. She had few enough of them, but they galled her still - a slender chain to the past she could not quite bring herself to break.

The room was as empty of life as she had found it, and she had to admit the truth to herself - she was lingering. It made her suddenly, terribly angry. _You are being weak and childish. He said himself that he does not want you here and that he has no stomach for the work that must be done, but still you stand here like a simpering girl waiting for him to come through the door and tell you that he did not mean it - that he loves you and that love could possibly be enough. It is a fool’s sentiment, and you have wasted enough time._ She pulled the cases after her with a flick of her thoughts, letting the metal bind itself to her and glide around what tried to interfere, and the familiar resonance was a kind of armor against the tearing ache in her chest. _You have a duty to the children to make them safe, to all of your people. That matters more than a girl’s dreams and an American dilettante's pride._

She was at the landing that led to the front hallway before the bitter, tired laughter welled up in her throat. _Strange, how easy it is. I never even had time to unpack. Mein Gott, Charles, but how did you ever make me believe?_

 ***

Raven was sitting on the floor in the center of the darkened entryway. She watched Erika descend the stairs, luggage floating obediently after her. Anger burned away the metamorph’s weariness and brought her to her feet..

“So you’re just _leaving_?” It was an accusation of betrayal.

Erika Lehnsherr’s world-weary smile was a faint, almost invisible thing in the near dark of the landing, and she allowed her luggage to settle on the floor below as she crossed the last few stairs to stand just inside the short, marble-laid hall that led to the door. Her shoulders were square, the line of her back straight, and if her face was taut and her voice thick with strain... well, pride could only demand so much. “What would you have me say, Raven?” She bit down on the next words, burying them against her teeth. _Is it not obvious that I am, and why?_

Raven’s eyes darted back and forth across Erika’s face, searching desperately for a sign that it was all a terrible mistake, or a clue to what she could say to reverse the situation. She found nothing but stark, proud sadness.

“You’re the bravest person I know. You wouldn’t just _leave_ us.” She knew that once Erika had made a decision, it took enormous power to move her from it. Her words had started as a last-ditch persuasion effort, but as she heard them from her own mouth the impossibility of the situation tumbled sideways into a terrible sort of clarity.

“He told you to go?!” Her expression, half-hidden in the dark, was aghast.

It cost Erika more than she had thought anything ever would again to form the word, to breathe it out between them in the clinging night. “Yes.”

The word struck Raven to the bone. She was frozen to the spot, feeling more helpless in that moment than she had for a long, long time. In the back of her throat, a thousand things to say fought each other for her breath.

Erika crossed the distance between them in a long step, her hand coming up to cup the smooth ridges of Raven’s scaled cheek, and she tilted the younger woman’s face up until those bleeding yellow eyes met hers. “I cannot stay when he needs me to go, _liebling_ _._ You know I cannot, any more than I can take you when the children will need you to watch over them. Where I am going...” she smiled, then, and it was like the blade of a knife in the half-light. “It is better to go alone, if I cannot stay. If you still want to come … I will send you word, in due course. Perhaps a postcard.” Without losing any of its grimness, her expression caught a faint edge of whimsy. “Is that not how it is done in those movies you so enjoy? A post-card with an address, and a day, and a time.”

Raven leaned into Erika’s touch and swallowed the beginnings of tears. “Yeah. I’ll come when you tell me where. Take care of yourself, okay?” She clutched her indigo hand over the other woman’s, and they breathed each other for one more stolen moment.

They stood like that for all too short a time, and then Erika lowered her hand and gently, as if it pained her, untangled it from Raven’s. She reached out silently to take her coat from the rack, sliding it around her shoulders, and her fingers brushed the familiar metal weight of the gun in one pocket and the knife in the other. Raven had already taken her hat, holding it in slender fingers as though the girl might not let it go, and Erika smiled faintly as she reached out and tugged it away before setting it firmly on her head. “I always take care of myself, _liebling_ _._ It is one of my talents.” Her fingers stirred, summoning the bags up behind her, and outside there was the soft rumble of gravel under a car’s wheels. “My cab is, I see, a little more than punctual. I think I will miss the convenience of America.” She reached for the door, paused, and her voice choked on a whisper. “I will miss so many things.”

Then she was gone, the door holding itself ajar until her bags had trailed after her and then closing itself with a distinct, mournful thump.

***

Raven stomped into the library, finding Charles slouched in an armchair watching the rain slide down the windows. A partially full brandy snifter sat on the floor next to the chair. She planted herself directly in front of him and stood fuming silently before she found the words.

“I cannot believe you, Charles,” she hissed. “I love you, but you want to fuck up your own life, fine. It’s yours to piss away. Enjoy your martyrdom!” She stalked forward, hands on the chair’s arm rests, to lean over Charles. With her snarling face inches from his astonished one, Raven’s voice was quiet and sharp.

“But _how dare you_ shit on this for the rest of us?! I don’t care that Brian and Sharon groomed you to be the fucking asshole patriarch that you are. I am not taking your bullshit. Erika matters to me, Charles. She matters to the kids, too. The mansion is yours and you think that means you own all of us? Well fuck you. You and your squeamishness aren’t the rulers of the universe.”

Breathing hard, Raven glared daggers at Charles, daring him to respond. He returned her gaze with a subtly tightening intensity of his own. Glancing at her blue-knuckled grip on the arm chair, he set his jaw. “Get off my chair,” he bit out.

Yellow eyes narrowing, Raven complied and stepped back, hands on her hips. She raised an angry eyebrow. “Well?”

Charles closed his eyes tightly, and she became aware that his hands were trembling. “Give me a moment. I’m trying to sort out my own anger from yours.”

Raven snorted in disgust and began pacing, but said nothing.

Several moments later, Charles opened his eyes again.

“I’m not capable of using my powers to fight on a regular basis. I’ve done it twice and I’m already a mess. I’d be a wreck in a month, if we continued on like this.” Raven sucked in a breath, but Charles held up a hand before she could speak.

“When she leaves, Erika can live her life any way she sees fit. I’ll be doing the same. The children won’t have to live with guardians who go on clandestine para-military missions. It seems like the least damaging situation possible.” He turned his glare on the ceiling, unwilling to admit that he hadn’t thought that part through until after the fight.

Raven shook her head. “You’re wrong. You, and the children, and mutantkind need her.”

Charles give her an incredulous look that turned venomous. “I need someone to drag me into crazy battles against the government? The children need her to teach them to, what, fight? _Kill?_ ” He threw himself to his feet. “Mutantkind needs a-- a _guerrilla fighter_ to champion our cause? I’m sure _that_ would gain us the sympathy of the general population!”

Raven gave an angry, mocking laugh. “God, you’re a worse idiot than I thought if you think that popular support alone will win us this war.”

“God, Raven, don’t be ridiculous! It won’t _be_ a war if we work things out peaceably! Erika seems determined to start a war, not win one, and now apparently she’s dragging you along, too. Are you going to let her make you a murderer?”

Silence hung in the room like a thunderbolt about to strike land. The affront on Raven’s face turned to stony determination, her voice to fire.

“I do still believe that killing is wrong, Charles. But killing a hunter is better than letting him attack your children.”

Her brother exploded. “I’m not letting anyone attack them! I’m just not running off into the night to slaughter people who might attack us!”

“Sitting here and hoping--” Raven sighed, pinching the bridge of her azure nose. “Never mind. I’m not going to get that concept through your damn thick skull, so I’m not going to try.” She stepped closer slowly, looking at Charles with deadly seriousness.

“You don’t want to find out who you are with her, but have you considered what she’ll do without you? She’d never say so in a million years, but she needs you too, Charles.”

His jaw tightened and he turned away, gripping the edges of overly-plush curtains with white-knuckled fists. “Even if that’s true, it didn’t stop her from leaving,” he said in a thick voice.

Raven hoped that he could perceive her rolling her eyes. “Because you told her to go, dumbass. Why are you refusing to stay with the one person you need most?”

Still facing the rain-slicked glass, he answered acidly. “What I need isn’t, as you pointed out, your decision to make.”

“Ugh! You are impossible!” She turned on the spot, gesturing wildly. She paced her frustration out in tight loops across the end of the room. It took her almost five minutes, and in that time Charles continued his contemplation of the ceiling. Calmer, she turned to face him.

“What about me, Charles? What if I can’t live with the decisions you’ve made?”

At this, Charles sat up straight for the first time, searching his sister’s face and looking terribly sad. He remembered the way she’d simply appeared in his life one night. He supposed it was only appropriate that she disappear some day, too.

“You’ll have to do what you think is right.”

It hurt that he would fight so little to keep her. The sting settled around Raven’s shoulders like a cold armor.

“Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll stay long enough to get the kids settled, but she’s going to send for me someday. When she does, that’s where I’ll be going.”

She stood for a moment to let her declaration sink in, watching Charles’ face crumple. Then she turned gracefully on her heel and strode silently out of the room.

Charles sat with his head in his hands for half the night.

 ***

Some time around four, he trudged from the library to the kitchen, bringing his empty snifter. He stood for some time in the overbright empty kitchen, staring at the selection of bottles in the spirits cabinet. Without relish he chose a middling rum, retrieved a tumbler from among the glassware, and poured until the glass was almost full.

 _‘Is that really the best you can do, Charles?’_ It wasn’t her. He had felt her moving swiftly away from the house hours ago, and had refused to follow her to the limits of his range. It _couldn’t_ be her, and yet there she sat in his head in emerald-eyed judgement. He could almost taste the weight of the look of scorn she would have been giving the bottle, had she been sitting at the table instead of miles away.

 _‘Of course not, but I can hardly be blamed for wanting to numb this raging emptiness, can I?’_ He took a long swallow and set the glass down on the counter, staring at the amber liquid as it burned down his throat.

 _‘Yes, I can and do blame you. You can’t drink your problems away, and if you try, drinking will become one of them. How well can you care for the children while you’re drunk, Charles?’_   He suddenly saw himself, incoherent with drink and spreading his melancholy confusion among the young ones. Their pain was terribly clear in his mind’s eye. He saw Ororo’s face, twisted with nausea, unable to make the feeling go away; Scott, trying hard to focus on schoolwork, but with math problems done all wrong or not at all; little Heather, curled up on her bed and crying the tears Charles couldn't.

He frowned. _‘So I won’t get drunk.’_ He poured half the glass down the sink.

 _‘Oh? Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. You were doing such a good job of sobriety when I met you.’_ Memories swarmed him: raucous nights at the pub, solitary drinking sessions in his study, the mental voices more overwhelming every year and his corresponding increases in drunkenness. He paled, wondering if he had it in him to pour all the liquor in the house down the drain.

 _‘I can do better,’_ he retorted. _‘I can do better for the children.’_ He walked to the sink, ready to pour the glass down it, and before he knew it was raising the glass to his lips. Before he could take a drink, though, his arm stopped, feeling for all the world as if invisible fingers were gently forcing his wrist down.

 _‘You don’t have to do it alone, Charles.’_ He stared at his hand pouring the rum away as if by someone else’s will. His shoulders slumped as he leaned heavily on the edge of the sink.

 _‘What will I be, then? A sober violator of minds?’_ Swallowing around a lump in his throat, his eyes began to burn.

 _‘You’ll be a sober man. A man who can care for the children and fight to protect them.’_ He closed his eyes, leaning into an imaginary embrace. _‘And it’s better than being a drunken lout who can’t protect them even from himself, don’t you think?’_

_‘Those aren’t my only choices.’_

_‘No, they aren’t, but they’re the easiest ones. Do you really want to find out how well you’ll do at making the harder ones without me, love?’_

Charles’ eyes snapped open as he stood up straight, nearly banged his head on the cabinet, and braced himself against it as the ghost of her vanished. “My God, but I really _am_ a fool.” Chesire-like, the last thing he remembered of her was the soft fond sharpness of her voice. _‘My beautiful, foolish dreamer.’_ He dragged in his breath and ran for it, eyes already snatching at the clock as he dashed out of the kitchen.  _Still time, please let there still be time..._


	29. Chapter 29

The ferry to Liberty Island bounced cheerfully over the waves of the Upper New York Bay, tossing sea spray in the faces of anyone enthusiastic enough to stand on the fore observation deck. Being a Monday at 9am, even during a break from the rain, the crowd was sparse enough that nobody had to wait for a spot. Adventurous young couples stood with hands and arms entwined, attention torn between their destination and each other. Smiling or sometimes harried parents kept tight grips on their children as the little ones plastered themselves to the railing, giggling at the water in their faces or staring, fascinated, at the approaching Statue of Liberty. From the aft deck and through a hastily erected mental shield, Charles could dully feel some poor soul lose his breakfast over the side. As romantic or exciting as it could be, sea travel was not for everyone.

Sailing would, Charles thought, be agreeable if one could avoid sharing a vessel with the tender-stomached.

As the Lady loomed larger, Charles found himself impressed with her once again, no matter that he’d seen her a dozen times. She was breathtaking, a beautiful giantess representing his country’s highest ideals and the best engineering of the Steam Age. He knew that if Erika would linger anywhere in the city, it would be here.

He could only hope she hadn’t left. The clerk at the airport had informed him that the next flight to London was this afternoon at three, but Charles couldn’t know for sure that she hadn’t decided to go somewhere else by train or bus, or simply wait at the airport. He hadn’t dared search for her mind, worried that she might sense him and flee. She’d been gone from the hotel, in any case, and left no messages with the concierge.

He’d stepped out onto the sidewalk, his pace frantic as he had begun to panic. _What if she went somewhere I don’t know? Would I even know the difference if she were somehow captured? What if, even if I do find her, she refuses to ever speak to me again? How could I ever rest, knowing that she‘d be out there in her own private war against nameless goons?_

He’d almost hyperventilated himself into oblivion when he’d stumbled into a telephone pole. It was covered in layers of posters and a forest of empty staples still stuck in the wood. His face landed on a bright pink flier with tear-off phone numbers, advertising cheap sightseeing tours. He pushed himself back into a standing position and was three steps away before he stopped in his tracks. The cheap thing had been decorated with line drawings of important landmarks.

The poor rendition of Lady Liberty had still managed to convey her majesty and uniqueness, and that was if you couldn’t feel metal singing in your bones.

The ferry shuddered as it docked and Charles was jolted back into the present. The Statue loomed overhead in profile. Dozens of tourists were already wandering around to take pictures and buy overpriced hot dogs and kitschy souvenirs. He ignored them all and began striding purposefully around the Lady by way of the best viewing paths.

By the time he’d gone three quarters of the way around the star-shaped base of the statue, a coil of despair had begun to wind itself around his heart. He refused to give in to it just yet; he’d complete this circle, and then move to the base, and then to the Statue herself.

In the next heartbeat he saw Erika. She was standing at the very apex of the star, the near-silhouette of her coat and hat achingly familiar, her dark hair blurring the line of her shoulders. She was almost perfectly still as she looked up at Liberty, a tall proud figure framed against the awe-inspiring Statue and the spring sky. Charles’ breath caught, his whole being struck still for a moment. Then his urgency and need poured from his heart into his body like jet fuel.

He broke into a hard sprint, skirting the points of base and aiming for the staircase that gave access to the platform. He reached it in minutes, took the steps two at a time, and skidded to a stop behind the statue. _Have to be careful. You CANNOT muck this up, Xavier._ He stood with his hands on both knees, panting until his breathing and heartbeat slowed down enough to speak.

At a pace suitable for sight-seeing, Charles walked along the star-shaped base, unable to see beyond the square wall of the next level. He passed three points, crossing what felt like a painfully huge distance, before the second level reached a corner. He slid up to this corner, took a deep breath, and leaned around.

The relief from seeing Erika still there left Charles sagging against the stone, glad to have a support. Now he could see her face turned up to stare, the point of her chin, and the line of her throat. For a moment, he didn’t think anything at all.

The tourists continued to mill around him. He pushed himself off the wall and started walking.

She stood there, hands folded at the small of her back and the small pile of her luggage spread out around her, as though she were imitating the statue itself. She had a worn look, as though she had spent the night crying instead of sleeping, but her slender frame was still erect, her shoulders square, her expression composed. If she was thinking of anything but the vast weight of formed copper above her, she gave no sign of it. Even the thrum of her mind, familiar as it was, had been drawn in on itself as though to make as tight an armor of her thoughts as possible.

Charles slowed to a stop several yards from her, aching to see and feel her so brittle. As put-together as she looked, he knew her well enough to spot the signs. She seemed as hollow as he had felt since their fight. Contemplative, he left his hands in his pockets and chewed his bottom lip for a moment, at a loss. Whatever happened, it wouldn’t be tidy.

Still watching Erika, the telepath brushed against the minds of all the tourists in earshot. They began drifting away, first in singles and pairs, then whole groups. After several minutes, they had all moved far enough for privacy: he and Erika were effectively alone at one of the most famous places on the planet.

“Not exactly subtle, Charles.” She spoke to the empty air, eyes still fixed upward, though he could see and feel the extra tightness in her shoulders. He took a halting step forward, then stopped again.

“I’m--” he had to pause to clear his throat, swallowing his heart back down again. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” He licked his lips nervously, waiting. “I’ve been such a stupid ass, and I’m sorry.”

She rocked back on her heels subtly, shoulders clenching, and she seemed to struggle for breath before she found her voice to answer him. “While the apology is gratifying, Charles, it doesn’t change the reason you asked me to leave.” _Does it?_ He wasn’t sure if he heard the thought, or if her tone only suggested it, but it gave the smallest sliver of an opening to the end of the otherwise flat stone of her words.

Still she wouldn’t look at him, and he wasn’t sure if it would be better or worse if she did. His own pleading blue eyes were fixed on her profile, and his desperation was beginning to feel like something he was secreting from his pores.

“I need you.” He gave each word its own weight, hoping beyond hope that it would be enough. “Please stay.”

For what felt like a long time, she said nothing - a quiet, empty void of words and expression that left him adrift in a crushing, breath-stealing sea of pain. Then she lowered her head, at last, and he could see the weight of thought in her eyes - the intent, almost brooding inward focus. As if she were grinding something in the core of her soul, rendering it down to grist, and she was left without enough strength to make the world around her fully real. “I have been thinking a great deal about Samuel and his family,” she murmured, apropos of nothing. “My first thought was to go to Oxford, you see - perhaps to stay, perhaps only to see them. I was happy there.”

Charles blinked several times and tried not to sound crushed. “Oh. Well, if--if that’s what you want...” He paused, pulling for the words that should finish that sentence, and eventually giving up. He knew in that moment he wasn’t strong enough to wish her well if it meant she’d be out of his life.

“You don’t understand, Charles.” Her lips twitched up into a bleak little smile. “You asked me how far it would go - how far it might have to go. I told you that it would not stop until we were free, and I _believe_ that, but if it is true then my first thought was to go to the home of a man and a family who might well someday consider me the enemy. A monster. Who I might be obliged to...” her voice trailed away, and her hand came up in a sharp warding gesture, as though to push away a thought she found unbearable. “You spent that night asking what joining the war that’s coming might cost you, might _make_ you, and I wanted to shake you because... because you could never be anything but a good man, Charles. It isn’t in you. When I think about what it might make _me_....” Her voice gave way again, sharply this time, and she looked away - out to sea, into the clouds gathering at the edge of the horizon. When she went on this time, it was in a whisper that the wind nearly stole away. “I do not think I could bear to raise my hand against him, Charles. Against his sons or his daughters, or their sons and daughters.”

In the following silence her words sank into him like lead weights into a lake. In the depths he felt something break, and suddenly the solution was there, and he was forming it in his hands.

Three, four, five more steps and he was standing within arm’s reach, hands trembling at his sides with the effort of not taking her in his arms.

“What if you never have to?” There was a spark in his voice, an ember of hope that danced between them as though seeking even the smallest dry tinder in her to catch ablaze. “What if no one has to?”

“Charles...” he felt the weight of her frustration, even through the clinging weight of despair that clutched at her. In a moment, she would tell him that he was a fool. That the idea that humanity would patiently collaborate with mutantkind in the face of its own potential extinction was an impossible dream. That it would end, as things always did, in oppression and pain and violence. In a moment, she would tell him all of those things and she would believe them.

But not yet.

He could see the denials swarming behind her eyes, and he took her by the shoulder as if to chase them away with the touch. “You asked what I’d ever built; you’re right, I haven’t, not personally. But my father did, and he taught me how to invest, how to support causes, where to put money to the best possible use. I’ve ignored it before now,” he laughed at himself, “a lifetime ago, when I thought I’d be building theories and adding to the sum of human knowledge. But I still remember how. I can build a place for mutants in this world,” he said, gently taking her hand. “We can build ourselves a place.”

She didn’t believe him - didn’t believe it could do anything but dull the blow that would inevitably fall. He could see that in her eyes, taste it in her mind, and yet she didn’t push his hand away. Her thoughts spilled over him in a tangled, surging wave: beatings in the streets, laws that caught and snagged and choked until there was no room to live, fear in the eyes of strangers, camps ringed in barbed wire, dead and dying shoveled into the earth or burned to fine ash and billowing smoke. Blood in the streets, the unmaking of armies, the throwing down of governments, the unmaking of a world in fire and blood in the vain hope that _something_ could be built on the ruins. The horror of it choked him until he could barely breathe, and he felt her shudder with the need to turn from it. To grasp something, _anything_ that might turn away the future that was crushing the heart out of her to imagine.

She saw in his face that he knew - that he _saw_ \- and the ripple of anger at the intrusion guttered out in the face of that shared agony. One breath at a time, she pushed it down. Not away, because it was not the sort of thought that would ever truly be banished, but down into the iron vaults in the depths of her where all the horrors that man could visit on those he no longer saw as his brothers lived. The nightmare passed, leaving them both trembling in the cloud-dappled sun, and she slowly lifted her hand to rest it against his as their eyes met - haunted, for once, by the same memory.

“There were explosions in Birmingham last week; your Doctor King was nearly killed by one of them. The government sent in troops to restore order. The city promised to end their ‘segregation’ - their shutting away of the blacks from lunch counters, from hotels, from employment - but that was before the explosions. Before the army.” Erika looked into his eyes, searching. “Do you think anything will come of it, Charles?”

He nodded. “Yes, I do. Things are already better than they were ten years ago, and getting better.” Voice soft, he began tracing circles over the back of her hand. “We can make things better, Erika. I know it.”

“I cannot promise that when the day comes, I will not fight them with everything I have, but until then... until then, perhaps, we have time?” She hesitated, her gloved fingers slowly wrapping around his, and her voice was almost a whisper. “Time enough to disagree, and to see if there may be some substance to dreams after all?”

Charles did a terrible job of restraining a beaming smile. “Yes. Time enough.” He grasped her other hand, now holding both. “Will you stay?”

In spite of herself, she heaved a sigh that was very nearly a laugh as some of the weight seemed to slide from her shoulders. “You are the most beautiful, insufferable man. If you ever do this to me again, I will not be nearly so forgiving.”

He laughed for joy and threw his arms around her. “If I ever even think about it again, please save me from myself.” After a moment of warmth, he leaned back, suddenly intensely serious. One hand cupped her cheek as brilliant blue eyes drank in the sight of her. “God, I couldn’t have stood it if I’d lost you. I need you more than I need to rest easy at night.”

She leaned into him, the line of her slender body pressed against his, and she murmured against his ear with an exhaustion that seemed to take the warmth out of the morning air. “I think that I will let you take me back to Westchester now, Charles. I have had quite enough excitement for a single week.” Her cheek brushed his, a subtle dampness there the only sign of her tears, and then he felt the small smile that broke over her lips like a tendril of sunrise. “I suppose I ought to say that I want you to take me home.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Westchester, August 30, 1963**

In the air and light under an open window, Charles sat reading newspapers in the study, frowning slightly in borrowed frustration. Erika had put Heather to geometry this morning, and he suspected that it was only a healthy respect for the German’s already famous scoldings that had gotten their youngest ward to begin in the first place. Taking a deep breath, Charles strengthened his walls enough to enjoy the view of the mansion’s rear grounds.

In the past three months he’d managed to rearrange the room enough that it was more comfortable and reminded him less of his father. He’d taken particular pleasure in donating Brian’s beloved turn-of-the-century hunting trophies to the Museum of Natural History. The study was much more inviting without a snarling lion’s head looming over the desk.

He’d finished with the New York papers an hour ago and had moved on to others from Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington. In addition to events that could be related to mutants, Charles was keeping a close eye on the civil rights situation. He’d been rewarded that Wednesday, when a notice in the Washington Post had let him round up the children and be ready to watch Dr. King’s speech as it was televised from the March on Washington. During the viewing he could feel fear, pain and hope whirling over him like a storm-driven tide from everyone in the room, even Erika, and it had lit something in him as it had planted seeds in the hearts of the nation. The nebulous idea hadn’t given him peace since and, he imagined, likely wouldn’t until it was fully formed and he could give it life.

Down the hall Erika was finishing up the children’s morning lessons. Charles smiled at Scott’s tension between his enjoyment of the geometry he was learning from Erika and his boyishly urgent need to be outside. Heather’s frustration level had risen to overtake the telepath again, while Ororo was engrossed in Aesop’s _The North Wind and the Sun._ She disagreed with the Greek, finding the wind a much more adaptable personality, but enjoyed the idea that someone else could have heard its voice.

The clocks in the mansion struck eleven, and Erika dismissed the children. Charles felt the tension in his and Heather’s shoulders release and both heard and felt Scott’s whoop of freedom. The two made a beeline for the door and sprang out onto the grounds, laughing and teasing each other as they went. Ororo, still halfway through the fable, left slowly and only after receiving permission to take the book with her. Charles fondly watched her stroll across the lawn after the two younger students. In the past months she’d made great gains in her skills despite an almost total lack of formal education, growing as a thinker every day.

“I think I will have to ask you for help with Heather again, Charles. She is beginning to slip out between moments during lessons again, and while I am glad to see her learning more about her powers that is not quite the way I had hoped she would go about it.” Erika’s voice ambushed him, her presence sliding around him like a familiar embrace as she closed the heavy oak door behind her and crossed to one of the old leather chairs near the desk. She sat in it with her usual reflexive dignity, but the weight of her emotional relief was so intense that he was caught by a distinct mental portrait of her casting her jacket aside and sinking into it. “I do not think I ever understood how difficult it must have been for the rabbi to teach us all.”

Setting down the _Boston Herald,_ Charles leaned on the desk and smiled, hair falling forward. “I’m beginning to have a certain sympathy for my old tutors, myself.” He smoothed the hair away, a gesture once so calculated now completely unselfconscious. “You’re doing beautifully with Scott’s geometry lessons.”

“Scott,” Erika observed with a small smile that couldn’t quite disguise the almost maternal pride behind it, “is going to be a brilliant mathematician; he has a positive genius for it. In a year, he will be doing basic calculus problems in his sleep.”

“That’s wonderful.” Charles smiled with genuine pleasure, but then his mouth quirked mischievously. “Calculus will be so relaxing after all the girl-chasing dreams he’s been having.”

“He is a boy who will shortly be a man, Charles. I think that we can be confident that he will be thinking a great deal on that subject for some time to come.” Erika tilted her head to look at him more fully, and he caught a flash of laughter in the green of her eyes. “Perhaps he will, like you, prefer that the girls chase him?”

Color rose into Charles’ face as he chuckled. “Perhaps.” Behind his laughter bloomed memories of his most recent ‘mauling’ at Erika’s hands, and he leaned back, breath uneven. “It is certainly an experience not to be missed.”

Her eyes wandered over the table, taking in the spread of newspapers, and he could taste the surge of restlessness that stole the amusement from her thoughts. _Somewhere out there, a mutant is being beaten or stolen or hurt. Somewhere, someone is learning how to come for us. Somewhere our people are being hunted, and I sit here in the sun and laugh in this_ bürgermeister’s _house. Mein Gott, what will I tell Scott when he is old enough to understand that we have made a gilded prison of this house?_

She caught the change of his expression, lifting her head, and her lips quirked faintly as she looked into his eyes. _Am I shouting again, Charles?_

Covering her hand with his own, he nodded. “It’s all right, love, I’m used to it.”

 _‘This house...’_ The idea that had been worrying at him clicked.

He stood, moving to the window, taking a sweeping look at as much of the mansion and grounds that he could see from the study. They’d all felt out of place, six people rattling around in a structure designed to house fifty in absurd luxury, unsettled by the emptiness. A house of moderate size didn’t have as much floor space as they were now occupying, and they had only touched a quarter of the rooms.

It didn’t have to be empty.

Almost whirling around in excitement, Charles took Erika’s hands and dragged her to her feet. “It won’t be a prison, it will be a school. We’ll find mutant children--the children who most need us, the ones who have nowhere to go or powers they can’t control yet--and bring them here, to learn in safety.” He pulled her to the window and stood behind her, pointing out rooms as he spoke. “The whole east wing we can use for bedrooms or dormitories. The drawing and sitting and other useless rooms on the ground floor can be classrooms. The grounds are more than big enough to give them a place to play and train, and when the weather’s bad they can do it inside. We can knock out the wall between the formal dining room and the serving area and convert it to a small gymnasium.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. His voice was warm, quiet in respect for the nearness, and barely restraining his excitement. “Think of it, a safe haven full of mutant children learning how to be who they are.”

“A start,” she whispered, and he could feel the engines of her mind taking hold of the idea - grinding and seizing at it, stretching it, exploring it for faults. The intensity of her sudden focus was like the drop in air pressure before a storm, and yet beneath it he could feel a hot flare of excitement that was struggling to catch fire. “It would be a start. We would need teachers, Charles - doctors, nurses. More. How would we find them? How would we find the students themselves?”

Several images crashed together in Charles’ mind: Avalon as seen through Raven’s memories when it was in full swing, Erika’s memories of the smoky ruin, and his own recollection of being sharply dressed down in an Oxford pub. He narrowed his eyes, teasing out the common thread. A moment passed before he spoke, slowly at first but then gaining speed.

“We need an Avalon--we need a hundred. Not a bar, but some place where mutants can go to meet each other, to get help, to give it. They have to be accessible, in neighborhoods where mutants can go; we can start with one each in the major cities. They should offer connections to medical care, lawyers, education, mechanics, anything.” He stepped around Erika to look her in the eye. “Can you imagine going to see a mutant doctor, or getting financial advice from a mutant accountant? And they’d always be able to contact us. If a child needed help, he--or she--could go to one of the centers and someone there would call us.” He grasped her hands. “We’ll have a network across cities, states--maybe the country, one day. Maybe further. We’ll have a place in the world.”

The idea of it illuminated his face, as if it were a tangible thing inside him that created its own light and threw every shadow from the room, and in the face of his certainty Erika felt her own doubts burning away. It was _possible_ \- it could be done, and that was enough. No matter how sure she might be that the cities would fight them to prevent accepting these Avalons, that when the crush of hate and fear came they would be targets for rioters and worse... it was a beginning. It would be a refuge, if the worst came, and a place to bring together those who would fight. Those who would need their protection. It would give them all a place to begin.

If it had a chance in a million to stop the things she dreamed of in her nightmares, if it had a chance in a thousand to stop the war she was sure in her bones was coming....

“It has to be tried,” she said aloud, almost too softly to be heard, and she looked up into his eyes. “It will take all of our lives, Charles.”

As if they were in the engine room of a great ship, he felt Erika’s resolve curled like iron around the heat of her drive. Her fervor would sustain their efforts until the end.

Looking at her in wonder, he traced his thumb across her cheek. “I can’t think of a better life’s work. I certainly can’t think of anyone better to work with.” As always, he was drawn to her, and when their lips met his joy pulsed through them both like music.

When she drew back from him at last, her fingers stayed resting on his cheek as she studied him with such a strange, focused intensity that he could make almost nothing of her thoughts. It was as if, in that moment, she were holding the whole sum of her mind in her hand and letting the weight of it tip the balance of her fingers where it would.

 _He will need me more than he ever has, to do this and to survive it. To build even a chance of this dream, even if I think it must be doomed to failure, I will have to give myself to it more fully than I ever gave myself to anything - even to my work in Oxford. Would I do that, for this man?_ She rolled the thought in her hand, and the answer came from the deepest part of her with such certainty it nearly pushed the breath out of her. _No. Not for him. To avoid shedding an ocean of blood, and making all our people’s children the murderers of their kin and their friends. For that, I would try any impossibility._

A bright, sharp weight of relief rolled through her, as if the decision had cut a weight from her shoulders, and in its place came a rush of tender, rueful laughter as she looked into those earnest blue eyes. _“_ My beautiful, foolish dreamer,” she murmured so softly that she did not know if he heard her, and then she brushed her hand down his coat to rest it lightly over the inner pocket in which she could feel the outlines of a small case. “You have been carrying a gram and a half of platinum in your pocket now for almost five months, Charles. The answer is yes, and I think that it is past time you asked.”

He reflexively clutched at Erika’s hand on his jacket, mouth working soundlessly around a nervous smile. _You knew? Of course you knew--I can’t believe--it never seemed like the right time..._ He cast about for breath and composure but gave up almost immediately in favor of throwing his arms around her and kissing her fervently. Their connection opened like floodgates and when he reached out for her he found the weight of her affection - her love - waiting to pour over him in a cleansing torrent. She had known, she had wanted it as much as he had, and it was only the aching certainty that nothing could come of that more private dream of a home and a family which had held her back from demanding the ring from him months ago. She had been so _sure_ that she could offer him nothing lasting, and now with a life’s work ahead of them that would enfold and demand them both she could allow herself the hope that if she had a purpose in his life then the rest of their passion could be buried in and sustained by that foundation.

When she broke the kiss to look into his eyes again, their breath was tumbling together so fiercely that neither of them could speak. She tried, stumbled for want of air, and then laughed softly and reached for his mind with her own. _Perhaps_ , she brushed the words into his thoughts, _I was afraid that you would not prove to be a man I could give myself to. You have always seemed so much a thing of charm and air, Charles, and I was afraid there was not enough substance there to make a life out of. Forgive me, my love, for thinking so little of you. You proved me wrong when you came for me, you have proven me wrong with the children, and you are proving me wrong now by bringing substance to your dream. It gives me hope that perhaps you will prove me wrong about the world, as well._

Smiling softly, Charles pulled her close enough for them to rest their foreheads together.

 _When I do, it will be because we changed the world together._ His smile turned playful. _And I will happily prove you wrong about anything you like._

“We will see about that,” she murmured, then laughed and kissed him.

He pulled her closer again. When they broke the kiss, he grinned. “Don’t think I’m not thrilled to hear your answer, because I am completely ecstatic,” he pressed his lips softly to the corner of her mouth, “but would you like to hear my proposal anyway? I’d hate for the speech to go to waste.”

She was smiling, now, a warm and generous glow on those narrow, sharp lips, and her eyes were dark emerald glories under the kiss of the sunlight streaming through the windows. “So long as it is a short speech, Charles. If I had let you begin with the question and left you waiting this long for an answer, you would be quite unstrung.”

Laughing, he pulled the box out of his pocket. “You are quite right. I promise it’s less than half an hour,” he winked as he opened the velvet cube, presented her with the ring, and sank to one knee.

“A little over a year ago I’d written my thesis to try to figure myself out and was wondering if I’d find any other mutants through my work. I was guzzling yards of ale in the pub and drinking two shots of liquor every night to drown out the noise of all the minds around me. I’d been engaged and had come to the conclusion that I would never form a meaningful connection with a woman.

“Then you handed me my head and walked out the door, and took everything I knew about the world with you. I don’t think I was ever so confused, tangled and awe-struck as I was in those few months, and by the time you dropped me on my feet again I was sober and knew that what you’d give me - what you would _choose_ to give me - mattered more than anything I could charm out of you. Then London, and the car - I don’t think I had ever seen anything so beautiful or terrifying in my life. You astonished me then, and you still do now; I cannot help imagining that some day I will have to admit that in addition to saving my life, you’ve also done more than anyone to help me make it. I love you, I need you, and whatever happens I will always, always be yours.

“I don’t know what the world we’ll face tomorrow will be like, or the one we’ll make that follows it. All I can say is that a life we shared would be better than any life I could live alone.

“Erika Lehnsherr, will you marry me?”


	31. Epilogue

**Oxford, January 13, 1964**  

The house seemed smaller than she remembered it, now that she was standing in the middle of the front room watching the dregs of daylight spilling through the windows, but Erika Xavier née Lehnsherr suspected that might have as much to do with the modern castle in which she had spent half of the last year as it did with the present, empty state of the residence in Oxford that would remain the possession of the Xavier family for less than a week now that they had finished signing the papers. She ran her mind out into the bones of the house, feeling the steel frame of the room in which she’d made love to Raven for the first time, the old iron windows of the study where she’d trusted Charles with something even more closely guarded than her abilities and the familiar resonance of the kitchen in which she’d spent the first of what she’d thought would be the first of so many hours; so few, now, that they seemed almost a dream. It ached, distantly, but she was surprised by how little grief she felt echoed back to her from the empty walls.

What she had of mourning, she supposed, she had spent three days ago in the front room of Samuel’s house. He had not understood - least of all when she had pressed the slender notebook with the last of her Unified Field equations into his hand and told him that he would have more use for them than she would - and she had not been able to explain. Not beyond the half-truth that there was no room for a proper commitment to physics in the new life she was building with Charles, and that she wanted him to have the sum of her work as thanks for all he had done and been to her. She had gone out with her head high and her shoulders square, the way she wanted him to remember her, but she had wept that night in the hotel so fiercely that Charles had finally given up on words and wrapped his mind around hers in an effort to comfort her. It had done little good and there had been even less need for it, but she had loved him for the effort.

There was a part of her, she knew, that she was leaving behind in the University and the small room she had emptied even before they had left Oxford for New York. She had loved being Erika Lehnsherr, experimenter in physics, but it had been a dream of hiding and now it was over. She still ached with that knowledge, however distantly, but when her thumb brushed across her fingers and touched the bright shimmer of platinum fire that wrapped the third finger of her left hand, she felt a silent laugh sing out of her into the bones of the house. _Everything that is reborn has to give something up, after all. Phoenixes, in the end, are reborn in fire._

Charles came down the stairs slowly and stopped a few steps before the bottom. He ran his hands over the well-worn polished banister, swept his gaze slowly around the front room, and sighed.

“God, I’m going to miss it here.” His eyes met Erika’s across the room, drawing comfort from the glint in her eyes. As breathtakingly gorgeous as she had been at Saint John’s--standing straight and tall as always, red-trimmed violet dress emphasizing her natural elegance--seeing her in the Oxford house as his wife was almost too beautiful to bear.

“In a perfect world, this is where I’d bring you after Paris.”

“In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be needed anywhere else.” She walked to the edge of the stairs, brushing his hand on the end of the banister, and her lips quirked upward in a small smile. “I’m not sure I could live in a perfect world, Charles. I’m not fitted for it. I think I might just be fit for this one, though, if you will help me live in it.”

“Always,” he murmured, leaning forward to kiss her, their fingers entwined. _As I’ll need you to help me._

 _Together_ _._ Whose thought it was, neither of them could have said - it crackled between them like the warmth of the kiss, making a bright spark in the growing dark of the room.

As they parted, Charles threaded an escaped lock of Erika’s hair through his fingers. Even as the light failed, her eyes burned with their own fire. “Everything upstairs is sorted. Do you want to go watch the sunset from the garden before we leave?”

“If we do that, we might not leave at all,” she murmured softly. “We have a honeymoon to finish, a school to found, and the first of your clinics to start.”

“ _Our_ clinics.” He nodded. “You’re right. And I suppose it’s best to just get the leaving over with.” He descended the last steps and retrieved Erika’s coat from a hook on the wall. Holding it out to her, he continued. “And there’s that girl in Boston. I’ve told her we’re coming but she still didn’t quite believe me.”

“I would be happier if you’d told her _parents_ we were coming, Charles, but I think that can wait until we get home.” She slipped into the coat, pulling it around her, then reached for her hat and paused with it still dangling from her fingers. “Home.” She rolled the word in her mouth, thinking of the big house in Westchester, and then crooked a smile at him. “I suppose it is, isn’t it?”

Charles smiled as he swirled his own coat over his shoulders. “It has you and the children, so yes, it is.” After fastening his buttons, he stood with a hand on the doorknob, facing the room.

“Goodbye, house. May the Shiptons love you as much as we have.”

“Goodbye, Oxford.” Erika tugged her gloves on, looking away from the room and out into the gathering dusk, thinking of the Channel and the lights of Paris beyond. Of the next sunrise, and the next after that. “Come along, Charles.”

He grasped her gloved fingers in his and smiled. Under his hand, the door clicked open, and they went out together into the dark.

 ***

_Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world--that is the myth of the atomic age--as in being able to remake ourselves._

_\- Mohandas Gandhi_


End file.
